On the Road
by 5sunday5
Summary: Jaime has not lost his hand, nor reflected on the error of his ways. He has, though, lost his travelling partner Brienne, and needs to replace her. But this new companion is no loyal Knight of the King's Guard. Her horse hates him, for one. How can they ever trust each other? And who is she, really? Coarse language, very graphic violence, sex scenes. Jaime L, OC, Nymeria
1. Jaime

**An overdue disclaimer. All characters and places referred to in this story are the creation and property of G.R.R. Martin, with the exceptions of the characters of the girl, Sooty, Brodrick, the poacher, outlaws, various common folk and the town of RedHollow, which are my own creations. I do not profit financially from this story in fact seeing as I write most of it when I'm meant to be working at my actual job it is directly contributing to my poverty. Cheers.**

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The man sat on the side of the road with his head down, long strands of greasy hair falling to cover his face. When the girl rode up to him he raised his head and squinted at her. She stopped her horse a safe distance from him and frowned.

'What are you doing here?' she asked. 'Do you need help?' Her eyes roamed around the bush behind them, she didn't want to be ambushed by outlaws. The man looked too tired to be much of a threat to her on his own. It was impossible to tell what colour his clothes had once been, they were now just road-colour, a dingy grey. Dark patches on his pants may have been dry blood. Again, it was hard to say, from where she sat on her horse. But she didn't move any nearer. She hadn't survived this long in the world by being too trusting.

'I do need some help, actually,' the man replied, politely. His accent was well-bred, another mystery. He raised the hands he'd been holding in his lap. Metal glinted dully between his wrists. 'Could you... is there any way you could remove these handcuffs?'

The girl shook her head. 'I only have a bow and some arrows. A small knife. Nothing to break that with.'

The man slumped back against the ditch. 'Never mind,' he said, resigned, almost cheerfully. He raised his grime-encrusted face to the late slanting sun and closed his eyes.

The girl was intrigued. Despite his filthy appearance and the fact he was shackled, he didn't strike her as dangerous. She generally had an instinct for this sort of thing, and nothing was pinging her radar about this stranger. She nudged her horse a little closer to him, and the horse's shadow fell across his face. He opened his eyes. They were green, quite striking.

'Hey. I could maybe... take you to the nearest town or something. A blacksmith could get them off for you.' He stared at her and she wasn't sure what he was thinking, or even if he was in his right mind. 'Look, I don't care what your story is. The handcuffs and...' she gestured generally at his ragged clothes. 'Whatever. Your business. I'm going through the next town though, if you need a ride.'

The man smiled, and his face cracked into many lines. His teeth were surprisingly white against his dirty and sunburnt face. Scars ran across his nose, and they looked fairly recent. 'Where are you going after that?' he asked.

It wasn't the answer she was expecting, and she hesitated. 'I'm on my way to deliver some goods and messages to KingsLanding. I pass through a few towns on the way, usually I stop for the night and - '

The man cut her off mid-sentence, quite casually, as if he were used to cutting people off. He had a sort of natural arrogance that was at odds with his current condition. 'I have an offer for you. Take me to KingsLanding and I'll pay you 500 gold coins. And buy you a new horse. That one looks a bit done in.'

The girl looked offended. 'What's wrong with my horse?'

He shrugged. 'Nothing, for a delivery person. Or a trader, or whatever you are. An ugly, slow beast, but good for carrying heavy loads.'

The girl opened her mouth to defend her horse's honour, but then closed it again. Sooty was rather slow. Not her fault, the mare was getting old. And she'd never been an attractive horse.

'What's the catch?' she asked instead.

'Ah,' said the man. 'There must be a catch.'

'For 500 gold coins? Nothing's that easy. Are you a fugitive? A criminal?'

'Hmm. You could say that. I was, but my former prison guard, or more accurately, my companion, has unfortunately...' he looked away, his face clouding over with regret. He swallowed and shook his head. 'Well, anyway. She's not accompanying me any more. So I'm in need of another assistant. As you can see I have no mode of transport, and my shoes are fucked.'

The girl laughed a little before she could help herself, then stopped. She peered at him, unconvinced. 'I could ask a lot of questions about that story of yours, but... ' she said.

'But. You won't,' he replied.

'No.'

'Smart girl.'

'So what's this catch, again?'

'Oh yes. That. Well, I might just require you to use less obvious routes to the Capital. Ones that don't... go through all the nearest towns, for instance. Or run into any passing patrols. Or... anyone at all, really.'

She considered this. 'That's the catch? That I keep to the back roads and avoid towns? And other people? Is that all?'

'Pretty much.' He smiled up at the girl charmingly. How anyone could be charming sitting in a muddy ditch, covered in layers of muck and in chains, was beyond her, but somehow he managed it.

'I can camp rough,' she said. 'But I'm not going to be able to get those things off your wrists.'

'That's an inconvenience for me, I must say.'

'Like I said, if we hit the nearest town...'

'No towns. Towns are out. I'll just have to live with these cuffs a while longer.'

She grinned. 'They kind of suit you.'

'Do they? It's my general Up To No Good vibe, I imagine. Always been blessed with that. At least now I look the part.'

She nodded.

'So, do we have a deal?'

'How do I know you're good for it?'

'I guess you don't. I guess you're just going to have to trust me.'

The girl smiled. She didn't trust anyone, it was her one motto in life. _Trust no-one. _But he didn't have to know that.

'Alright then. We have a deal.'

'Excellent. I would shake on it but...' the man lifted up his hands, shrugged again.

'Let's start by getting you off this road,' the girl suggested. 'Before someone comes along who recognises you, Ser NoGood.' She jumped down off her horse, and reached over to grab the man's hands and haul him to his feet. He was quite a bit taller than her, and thin. 'Can you jump on a horse with those things on? Because I have to make up a lot of ground if I'm going to go the back way to KingsLanding and still be on time for my deliveries. It might be best if we travel right through the night to get some distance between you and... whoever it is you don't want catching up with you, and quite frankly, it looks like you're about to fall over.'

They rode double with the man sitting behind her, going off-road for the rest of the evening and on into the night. The girl recognised some landmarks from having travelled through here with her mother some time ago; the gnarled curve of an old white tree trunk, the particular angle of a lone branch. The trees grew closely together and the scrub was thick. She let her mount negotiate her way through the undergrowth. Finally the bush thinned out somewhat and grass grew underfoot. Steam rose from Sooty's back as the sun finally emerged below the horizon and lightened the sky to pinkish-grey. The girl stopped as soon as she could hear the rush of the river.

'We'll rest here', she said, sliding off the horse. Her voice croaked. She hadn't slept since..._when was it again?_ She stood in the dawn light resting a hand on the horses' damp shoulder, staring at dust motes spinning slowly in the air in front of her. She felt a little dizzy. _How long should they sleep for? How many days would this add to her trip?_

'Are we going to eat, too?' said the the man, 'Only, I'm starving,'

'Yeah', was all the girl could manage to say. What had she got herself in for with this stray? He could be anyone. But 500 gold coins was a hard offer to turn down. She could retire from delivery work, for one. That is, presuming he came good on his promise.

'Jump down,' she instructed.

The man swung his right leg over Sooty's back and slipped off clumsily. Without his hands to balance he stumbled on landing and fell over. The girl watched as he sat up, looked as if he might try to get to his feet, but then changed his mind and just rested his cuffed hands on his knees. His wrists were thin, the tunic hung loose on his frame. It was impossible to tell what colour his hair was. She considered offering him a hand up, but it seemed too much effort. Besides, he looked quite content sitting there.

He glanced up at Sooty beside him, then at the girl. His eyes narrowed in the dusty light and he considered the animal. Sooty laid back her ears.

'Soooo... your horse doesn't seem super friendly. What does it do, bite?'

'Why don't you try something and see?' the girl said. She yawned. Her hood fell off as her face tipped up. When she talked there was a lag between her brain and her words. _Sleep. Need._

'You look rather nice in the daylight,' the man said, still looking at her. 'How old are you?' She stared dumbly at him. 'I'm Jaime by the way. And who do I have the pleasure of travelling with?' He seemed perfectly at ease to the girl, as if sitting on the ground in shackles, and talking to an uncommunicative delivery girl suffering sleep deprivation, was all quite normal.

'My name is not your concern,' the girl replied. 'I never give out my name to strangers. Standard protocol.' She yawned again, ears popping. Conversation seemed way too difficult. 'We'll sleep for a while,' she said, her words running together slightly. _Gods but I'm tired_. She turned to Sooty. 'I'm sorry... you want to graze,' she mumbled, then gave up any pretence of being able to speak coherently.

'Grazing is all well and good,' Jaime said. 'Anything else on the menu though? Meat, maybe?'

'Later.' the girl said, irritated. This stray didn't seem to be able to keep his mouth shut. She was going to regret this deal, she just knew it. She took off Sooty's bridle, put on her overnight hobbles. The horse wandered a few steps and started picking the grass. The girl then must have unpacked her sleeping furs and lain down, but she didn't remember doing that, or anything else, for the next ten hours.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Late afternoon sun on her face. The air already starting to chill. The girl rolled over and sat up too quickly, her head taking a disorienting second to catch up.

She felt for the knife in its holster strapped to her waist, out of habit, then looked over and was relieved to see Jaime still in the same spot, lying on his back. Sooty stood beside him with one hind hoof cocked on its toe, lip drooping. She lifted her head at the girl's movement and made a small whuffley sound.

'Hello you,' smiled the girl. 'Time to get up our friend here and go, I think.'

She got up, feeling worse than before she'd slept. Her whole body was heavy, slow. She shook her head to clear the fuzz, stretched her arms up. _Evening_ _already? How did that happen? Ugh._

'Come on,' she nudged the man with one foot. 'Up.'

He rubbed his face, stretched his elbows apart. His eyes cracked open and he peered at her. In the fading light under the mask of dirt, his skin looked pale. Thin scars criss-crossed not only his nose but ran across his cheeks. His eyebrows were straight and dark, the eyes beneath them that startling green. 'Thought you'd never wake up,' he said.

'I'm awake now.'

'Thank the gods. It was rather a boring day. I think I dropped off myself, the horse isn't much of a conversationalist, I hate to tell you. Can we eat?'

'We'll eat as we walk.' The girl gathered up her furs and tied them into a roll, which she hung off Sooty's saddle. She pulled some bread out of a side pocket and handed half to the man. He turned it over hopefully.

'Is that it?'

'We can catch some fish for tonight.'

'I think I may die without some kind of meat product.'

'Well that will save me some trouble,' she muttered.

'If we could find a way of getting these handcuffs off, I'm a good shot with an arrow. We could have a rabbit in ten minutes.'

'Yeah I bet.' The girl finished packing, and they started off on foot downhill through the sparse trees towards the burble of the river, Sooty following.

'I just think we'd have a better chance of making it to KingsLanding if I could help out a bit. Without, you know. These on.' Jaime walked besides Sooty, the chain hanging from his handcuffs clanking lightly. 'They're rather restricting.'

'I'm _rather_ liking them on you,' the girl said, mimicking his accent. In truth she found it reassuring he was still cuffed. She had no intentions of finding any way to get them off.

They walked through the evening and long after the light had gone. The girl thought sleeping all day would've given her the energy to keep going most of the next night, but that wasn't the case. She couldn't stop yawning and felt achy and dull. Plus travelling in pitch blackness meant they had to walk slowly or risk tripping over logs and slipping down ditches. Sometime after midnight she gave up.

'This is crap' she said, as yet another unseen shrub smacked her in the face. She stopped. 'I can't see shit.'

'I guess that's why we're not nocturnal,' Jaime remarked.

'Yeah.' She yawned, again. 'We'll stick to daytime travelling from here on in.'

She walked on ahead until she felt out a reasonably flat patch of ground, and crouching, lit a small fire with the fire-lighter and dried wood shavings she kept in the pouch on her belt. Then with the area illuminated, she unpacked the food from Sooty's saddle bags. Jaime stood and watched what she was doing without comment. She felt as though he was assessing her, which was an unnerving sensation. She unlocked the D-ring clip on the back of Sooty's harness that she tied drag poles to, and threw the excess loops next to the tree where they fell in a heap, the links clattering. 'I won't need them any more,' she explained. 'If we're not travelling by road, I can't drag stuff.'

'Makes sense.' Jaime inspected the ground for a moment, then lowered himself to a sitting position.

'I'm cooking some dinner in a minute, after I tend to the horse. Seeing as you can't really help, maybe just sit there and rest.'

'Thank you,' he replied. He sounded sarcastic, but the girl was unsure if she was reading too much into what was just his natural tone of voice. She said nothing. Instead she turned and unhooked Sooty's harness, then scrounged around for a brush in her backpack. The horse butted her with her head. 'Oy, quit it.' The girl pushed her away fondly. Sooty's coat was rough with dry sweat and she groomed away as much as she could. Sooty grunted and extended her upper lip in appreciation. 'Is that good? Do you like that, huh?' The girl rubbed the big horse's neck and behind her ears, trying to find all the itchiest spots. Sooty's lip stretched out even more and waggled back and forth, making the girl chuckle. 'You funny,' she murmured. Tending to her horse, her constant companion, cheered her up, relaxed her.

'As much as I loathe to interrupt a touching moment,' Jaime said behind her, 'but any time you feel like cooking food...? I fear dying of hunger is a real possibility.'

The girl finished brushing her horse, then gestured for her to go. Sooty swished her tail and walked off between the trees, vanishing from sight. The girl knocked the brush on the heel of her boot to clean it, then chucked it back into her pack.

'How do you make it come back?' Jaime asked, intrigued.

'Who?'

'The horse.'

'She always comes back. She comes when I whistle. We're far enough in the bush here that no-one will see her.'

Taking the food bag from the saddle, she laid out some folded up packets of dried beans, strips of smoked dry meat, eggs, bread and two flasks, which on sniffing evidently didn't contain water but some kind of juice. Someone in the last town she'd stopped at had given her extra supplies in return for a favour she'd done them, delivering some contraband goods. She didn't drink alcohol, but this smelled a bit fermented. She considered her options, put some things back, then took out a pot and stood up.

'I'm going to get some water, for cooking. Do you think you'll survive 'til I get back?'

Jaime put both index fingers to his lips as if considering this seriously.

She walked off before he could answer. She carefully negotiated her way down the slippery bank to the river in the dark, scooped some water into the pot, re-filled her drinking flask, then headed back up.

'Why don't we try and catch some fresh meat?' Jaime wanted to know as she returned.

'Because we needed to make good time. And that means I didn't have time to hunt.'

'Can you... hunt?' he asked, a bit sceptically.

'I'm a delivery person, I live on the road,' she snapped. 'Of course I can hunt.'

Jaime raised his eyebrows. 'Here I thought you were a smuggler.'

She grinned. 'That too.'

'Multi-talented girl.' Again the tone of insolence.

She started cooking up the ingredients for their dinner. She used the beans, dried meat and vegies, and added some salt and other seasonings from the pouch she kept around her waist. The smell rose up in the steam; her stomach clenched and she felt sick with hunger. As soon as the bubbling liquid had thickened up enough, she poured it out into two wooden bowls and took one over to Jaime, pausing to consider the cuffs and then placing the bowl into his cupped hands.

'Careful, it's hot.'

He blew on the surface and sipped. 'Mmmm.' He gulped down a mouthful. 'This is delicious.'

'Thank you,' she said, inexplicably pleased. _Although, why do I care if he likes my_ _cooking?_

'What is in this?'

'Herbs, spices. Various... um, shit.'

'Well. It's good shit.'

She smiled. The food, and his apparent sincere appreciation of it, gave her a warm feeling inside. She didn't know why, and couldn't think about it any more at the moment, because, she realised, she was completely exhausted.

They finished off the pot of soup, shared her water flask, and then she took the dishes down to the river to rinse them. As she got back, Jaime was coming out from behind the tree.

'Had to take a piss,' he explained.

'Oh.' She paused. 'Do...do you need help to...?'

'No, I'm good. If I feel the need, I'll let you know.'

'Alright. Because if it's tricky I can... undo things. And...um. Not look,' she said awkwardly.

He grinned at her, amused by her discomfort. 'Sounds fun.'

_Oh gods get a grip. You're both humans. Humans eat, sleep, piss, shit. It's never worried you before._ She busied herself by unrolling the sleeping things and Jaime got into her spare blanket. She heaved a thick branch onto the fire to keep it going until morning, sending up a shower of sparks, then curled up into her own furs. As soon as her eyes closed she felt sleep falling on her like a heavy weight.

'G'night, girl,' Jaime said in the quietness.

She started awake, surprised. No-one had said goodnight to her since her mother.

'Goodnight,' she answered, after a pause.

Then, she slept.

The sun was already up by the time she woke, but it was worth the late start to feel nearly normal again. It took about an hour to have a quick wash in the river, eat, call up Sooty, and reload everything into the packs and saddle bags. The girl led Sooty down to the water's edge to drink, and Jaime came along too. She left them both there while she went back to finish clearing the camp. Even criminals on the run deserved some privacy and the opportunity to clean themselves a bit in the river, she figured, and she was hardly Lady Law-Abiding herself, so who was she to judge him?

She'd just finished covering up the signs of their camp when a sound caught her attention. It sounded almost like a horse's warning snort. Had something alarmed Sooty? The girl picked up her bow and arrows from where she'd rested them near the campsite, and crept back down the way she'd come, moving as quietly as she could. Through the trees she could see Sooty spinning in a circle, agitated. The horse snorted again. On the other side of her Jaime hopped around, trying to hold the animal still enough for him to mount. _That fucker, t_he girl thought, _he's trying to steal my horse and go on alone. Leave me here with no supplies. So much for 500 gold_ _coins. _

She whistled, a piercing shriek that made Jaime look over at her and Sooty prick up her ears. The man still had hold of the horse's reins. He made a last ditch effort to throw himself on Sooty's back, but the horse bucked as his weight fell across her, and reared up. Jaime clung on gamely for a few seconds, before tumbling onto the ground. Sooty snaked her head at him fiercely, and the girl ran out from the trees, gesturing at the horse to get back.

'Looks like my horse doesn't like you,' the girl said, grimly. She had her bow drawn, an arrow notched and pointed at Jaime's head. He gave her a disarming smiled, as if it were all a joke. She didn't smile back.

'I was going to ride her back up to the camp, save you the trouble,' he said. He sounded so innocent she almost believed him.

'Sure you were.'

'Turns out, the horse is a bitch.'

'Of course she is, she's my horse.'

Jaime opened his fingers in a conciliatory manner. 'If I only had these cuffs off I could help out more around here '

'I have a better idea,' the girl said.


	2. Sooty

They headed back up to camp, Jaime walking beside Sooty, the chain that had dangled from his cuffs now securely attached to the horse's harness by an old padlock and another length of chain. The girl had always known that lock would come in handy one day.

'This is hardly necessary,' Jaime grumbled, 'I thought we were a team.'

'We still are. I'm still taking you to KingsLanding. All back roads and avoiding people, like we agreed. And as soon as you pay me the money you owe for this little venture, you'll be a free man. I don't want to hang around too long in the Capital.'

'Why not? Bad debts?'

'Yeah, more like unpaid debt. Personal debt,' the girl muttered. 'History with the evil little shit sitting on the Throne right now. Very bad history. Pretty much with that whole fucked-up family.'

'Really?' Jaime sounded curious.

'The sooner they're taken down, the better. If it's by the Starks, Greyjoys, whoever. No offence,' she looked over at Jaime, 'I'm sure you can't help where you live. Most people who live there don't have a good word to say about them either though, I hear. Right?'

Jaime was staring at her strangely, as if he hadn't noticed something about her before.

'Hey, sorry if you don't like hearing the truth.' She held up her hands. 'But just ask anyone. It's not a lone opinion.'

Jaime didn't say much for a few minutes, then he sighed. 'I said I'd pay you, and I always pay my... I mean, I'm good for it. Trust me. But you really need to unlock me. I don't feel comfortable being this close to your horse. She's not my biggest admirer.'

'You tried to get on her before, didn't you? While I was asleep, that first day? I wondered why she was standing guard over you when I woke up. You know, I didn't tell you before but. Sooty seriously doesn't like other people.'

'You know, most people have guard dogs. A guard horse is a _bit_ of an overkill.'

'Lucky for me I've got one.'

'Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot. The trying-to-get-on-your-horse thing? I think you're taking it too seriously.'

'Just stop talking.'

'I promise I'll not touch your horse if you unlock me from this chain. We can keep the cuffs on, no problems. This is a big mistake .'

The girl decided to ignore Jaime's griping about a situation he'd brought upon himself, and concentrated on laying out all the food supplies. She allocated enough for the day, putting what little was left into a separate bag. She prised the seal off one of the two flasks from the pack she'd been gifted and swirled the red liquid around inside. It didn't smell very nice, the vapours singed the inside of her nose.

'Wine,' said Jaime, noticing her reaction with interest. 'Fermented blackberries, I think. Or is it pure ethanol flavoured with blackberry juice? A Southern speciality I believe.'

She pulled a face. 'Try some,' he encouraged her. 'You'll like it.'

She tossed the unopened flask at him over Sooty's back, and he caught it deftly even with his hands restrained. She imagined at some time in his life he'd played some kind of ball sport, and been good at it. 'You can have it,' she said, re-sealing and packing away the other flask, 'I don't like wine.'

'Fine by me,' he said. He used a thumb to pry off the stopper and took a long swig. 'Ahh,' he gasped, gagged. 'That's... quite something.' His eyes watered and he coughed. The girl looked away to hide her smile. He had another gulp and coughed again.

'Why are you drinking it when it's so revolting?' she asked.

'It's growing on me,' he said through a grimace.

'Well, don't let it grow too much. We have a lot of walking to do.'

They headed upstream, the girl moving confidently now, along the back paths she'd known as a child. Only people native to this area used the narrow tracks, and while she half-expected to come across one of her Tribesmen, even an outlaw, they met no-one. Cloud covered the sky and it was warm and humid. She stopped a few times to fill her water flask and let Sooty drink. At one stop, Jaime abruptly sat down and, using his cuffs, pushed off his boots. Then he dangled his bare feet over the bank into the water.

'Blisters,' he explained, at her raised eyebrow. The look of relief on his face almost tempted the girl to do the same but she resisted. She wanted to make good time and didn't know how long the weather would stay fine. 'C'mon. We've got to go,' she said impatiently. She'd missed out on a lot of regular business by agreeing to this trip, and this stranger had better compensate her for it.

Jaime sighed and scooted backwards in a sitting position to grab his boots. He tried unsuccessfully for a while to get his foot back into one, then had a go with the other, but the chains on his wrists seemed to be preventing him from getting enough grip to pull them on. The girl watched him silently, until one overly-ambitious yank sent his boot flying out of his fingers and into the river.

'Why the fuck did you take them off for?' she said irritably, as she sprang down the bank and scooped the boot up before it floated past. She upended it and water poured out. Then she tossed it to Jaime. He reached up his hands but missed it completely; it landed in the dirt to his left, and he fell over onto his back.

'Oh my gods,' she huffed, marching over to him. Jaime sat up again, chuckling, and the girl reached down and grabbed the wine flask out of his jacket. It weighed nothing; she shook it and a small amount sloshed inside. Disgusted, she turned and threw it into the river. It arced out and landed with a splash, bobbed up and then slowly spun and disappeared underwater.

'Good shhrow,' Jaime slurred, 'but that wasn't quite emp-ty.'

'What is wrong with you,' she sighed. 'Honestly. Get your fucking boots.' She snatched them off him as he passed them over, then knelt down and manoeuvred one onto his right foot, pulling the straps tighter than probably necessary. Her body leaned over his lap as she reached for his left ankle, holding the matching boot in her other hand. Jaime lifted his hands up to clear the chain out of her way, and the smell of his sweat tanged in her nostrils. It wasn't unpleasant, but it made her feel strange, as if she were upside down and blood had rushed to her head.

'You should always get me dreshed,' Jaime murmured.

She stood up too quickly, shook her head to clear the momentary loss of vision. Pressed her lips together. 'Look, I don't care that you're _wasted_. We've got to go.' She heaved him up by his jacket collar; he was much heavier than his skinny frame suggested. She shoved him forward and motioned to Sooty to walk on. 'If you fall over, I'll just get her to drag you by that chain.'

'I'm not wassshted,' he said. 'But... thanks for helping me with my bootssshh. No... I 'preciate it. Havin' you leaning on me... hash def'nitely been the highlight of our trip sho far.'

'Keep walking,' she said tersely. _How could he be so stupid to drink all that wine, on a hot day? Was he touched? That stuff was deadly._ She briefly felt sorry for him._ He'll be sick tonight._ After a while she slowed down and kept pace with him as he walked, somewhat unevenly, beside Sooty. She handed him her water flask, knocking it on his elbow when he didn't appear to notice. 'Here, drink this,' she ordered.

'I'm good,' he waved her away.

'Drink! It!'

He grinned and stopped, swaying. The girl pressed the flask into his chest. 'Alright, alright' he mumbled, taking it off her. She crossed her arms and glared at him as he concentrated hard on undoing the lid, but after a while it was obvious that the task was beyond him.

'Gimme that,' she said, and took it back. Just as she unscrewed the cap, he lurched forward and bumped her arm, knocking the flask onto the ground.

'Fuck!' she exclaimed, as the water gurgled into the dirt at their feet.

'Shorry, fuck... shorry. Your horshe... shtepped on me...'

The girl exhaled loudly in annoyance and bent down to pick up the flask. Suddenly something hard smacked into the back of her neck, and as she turned, she felt metal whip around and smash into her mouth. She was yanked backwards and sprawled onto the sand. Her hands instinctively clutched at the links of chain as they fell loose from her face; then she was wrenched forward as Jaime drew them sharply back to lash out again.

'Let go, girl,' he said, his voice calm and totally sober. He braced hard into her chest, jerking the chain to try and free it. Sooty snorted and moved sideways, taking them both a step along with her. The girl was on her knees. She tried to get a breath to talk, to give Sooty a command, but her lungs wouldn't work. She didn't let go of the chains either.

Jaime dragged her up to him and looped the chain around her neck. She could feel the solidness of his arm muscles as he seemingly effortlessly lifted her off her feet. 'Where're the keys to this lock?' he asked quietly, urgently, 'I don't want to hurt you, but I need the key. Where is it?'

He dropped her but kept tension on the chain, his hands feeling for her belt, under her top. The girl felt her knife slide out of its holster, the keyring ripped free. She scrabbled and dug her fingers into the skin of her neck, trying to get under the metal that felt like it was crushing her windpipe. Her vision became a red sheet. She was vaguely aware of Jaime's hands leaving her belt, and a click as he unlocked the lock from Sooty's harness, then she was pushed backwards and the chain was falling away from her.

She wheezed, got to her hands and knees. She could hear Sooty stamping and blowing in alarm. As the red cleared from the girl's eyes she could see again; more red, this time puddles of blood and saliva that splattered from her open mouth onto the sand in front of her. Her teeth had cut into her lips. She coughed, choked, stood up. _Where was that son-of-a-bitch_? She took a step and toppled sideways, but Sooty's broad body was there to hold her up. The girl couldn't speak, but she gave her horse a hand signal she understood.

Ever since Sooty had been a yearling, the girl had taught her how to chase down sheep, cattle, big cats and most useful of all, people. The old horse really was the girl's secret weapon, the reason she had managed to deliver goods on her own for years without being attacked or robbed. The hand signal was clear and well-understood to the horse - _Get him!_

Sooty sprang away, and without her as a prop, the girl fell over. She pushed herself back up onto her heels and wiped her mouth with a sleeve; it stung and her whole bottom jaw was numb. She crawled over to her water flask where it lay half-buried in the sandy dirt, kicked aside in the scuffle. Taking a deep, painful breath, she got to her feet and balanced unsteadily. _It's like I'm the drunk one. Except, he wasn't drunk. _

She allowed herself a small grin of admiration at his ingenuity, then started walking in the direction Sooty had gone, following the gouged holes of hoof prints. Hearing sounds up ahead, she began to run.

Dodging between the trees, she saw Sooty first, head tossing up and down, ears pinned. She was pivoting on her hindquarters, her front legs striking out. The girl saw Jaime get up off the ground and try to duck around her, but the mare was too quick and her shoulder crashed into him, knocking him over again. The girl tried to whistle but only air hissed out of her bruised throat, and the big horse lunged forward again. Dust plumed up from the force of her front hooves landing, obscuring Jaime altogether. _If that was his head, he's dead,_ the girl thought, with a pang of guilt and fear. She ran faster, and reached them as Sooty pranced sideways, still snorting explosively. Relief flooded through the girl as she saw Jaime was getting to his feet, albeit slowly. He didn't look so good.

The girl motioned to Sooty to stop, backing the horse away with both palms out. Sooty snorted one last defiant blast, then retreated. The girl leaned down warily and grabbed her knife off the ground where Jaime had dropped it, holding it out in front of her as she approached him. 'Were you going to stab my horse?' she rasped, the words spiking like needles in her damaged throat.

'That was the plan,' Jaime said, reaching out his still-cuffed hands to a tree trunk to steady himself. Blood poured down his face from a cut above his eyebrow. 'Until your horse...tried to kill me first.' He laughed weakly.

'If she'd tried to kill you, you'd be dead,' the girl said. 'She was stopping you. Like I told her to.'

'I'd hate to see how she kills people, then,' he remarked, leaning heavily against the tree, 'Must be a subtle distinction.'

'You're alive aren't you?' the girl sneered. Excess adrenaline turned to anger inside her. _She might've killed you_, she thought,_ if I hadn't got here in time_. It wouldn't be the first time Sooty had stomped someone to death._ What the fuck was he doing anyway, trying to run off like that? Hadn't he asked for my help in_ the _first place?_ She could see the fast pulse of blood pumping from the wound on his temple, it had soaked his top and fat drops were pattering from the hem of it down onto the dirt. As she got close enough to reach for his cuffs, he slid down the tree-trunk and collapsed.

She called Sooty over, re-locked the chain on his wrists to the harness, then propped him up against the tree. His head lolled and beneath the slick of blood his skin looked icy white. She held a hand to his face: still breathing.

'Fuck it,' the girl said to Sooty, 'I guess we're stopping here for the day.'


	3. Truce

He stirred and opened his eyes as she was wiping the blood off with a wet cloth dipped in cold water. She wrung the cloth out in the pot beside them, dabbed again. 'Don't move,' she said, submerging the cloth back in the water and then squeezing it over the cut so that water flushed down his face.

'It's fine,' he said, flinching away from her.

'I said don't move, fool,' she snapped, 'I have to clean it out. Horse's hooves are full of germs.'

He sighed heavily and sat still. She glanced at his expression and was pleased to see he looked remorseful. Or, just pissed off. Or a bit of both.

'Are you alright?' he asked.

She pointed at her lip, which felt puffed up like a sponge.

He winced in sympathy. 'Ouch.'

She continued cleaning his cut, which he didn't react to at all.

I'm sorry,' he said. 'If that means anything.'

'I don't know,' she replied acidly. 'Does it?'

'I actually am sorry. Not for running off, but for hurting you. I didn't mean to hurt you... you were just in the way.'

'Sooty doesn't take kindly to people hurting me.'

'So I noticed.'

'I mean, I'm sorry too. For siccing her onto you like that, after. I should've just let you fuck off. But...' the girl shrugged. 'I was mad you tricked me. And I needed my knife. My mother gave me that knife.'

'Yeah. Sorry I took that. Thought I might need it.'

'You need more than a knife out here. The locals will cut you into pieces and play noughts and crosses with your guts.'

'Really? Is that a common past-time amongst your people? I guess the quality of tavern entertainment around here is quite low.'

She screwed up her face. 'Don't be patronising. '_My people_' just don't take kindly to strangers, is all.' She smiled sweetly. 'Unless... they think there's money to be made from them. An escaped prisoner wandering around? With maybe a reward on his head? That might pique their interest. Maybe you should go try your luck with them. I'm sure they'll escort you safely all the way back to the prison cell you recently escaped from.'

'No need to be mordacious.'

'No need to use big fucking words no-one understands.'

'I believe you just said 'Pique.'

'That's not a big word, it's a small word -'

'No-one understands it -'

'I understand it.'

'I don't think you even used it in context - '

'Oh please _just stop talking_!'

Jaime stopped talking, for a few seconds. She squeezed more water over his eyebrow. 'I'm just trying to say -' he said.

'Shhh -'

'That I'm sorry.'

The girl sighed, exasperated, and gave him a look. He shut up. She dropped the pink stained cloth into the pot and stood up. 'Does that hurt?' she asked, pointing at the cut on his head.

'Nope.'

'Good,' she said with a wicked smile. 'Because I'm going to have to stitch it.'

He looked satisfyingly aghast at the idea. The girl gestured to Sooty to come along, and helped Jaime onto his feet by hooking one of her arms under his. He dragged his feet as they headed down to the river. 'How bad is it anyway?' he wanted to know.

'You're losing a lot of blood, head wounds are like that. And it's gaping open. Probably best to not let it keep bleeding out. I don't know if you know this, but our bodies' blood supply is actually quite limited.'

'Can't you just... stick a bandage on it?'

'I'm going to stitch it.' He looked about to protest again and she repeated firmly, 'I'm going to stitch it, so stop sooking! When I was seven I was racing my horse through the forest and ran into a tree, and a branch went right through my arm. Here,' she indicated a spot just above her elbow. 'Right the way through. I was stuck on that tree until my horse galloped home and they came looking for me. They lifted me off, and my mother stitched up my arm. I didn't cry and neither should you.'

'One: like fuck a seven year old girl didn't cry over that,' Jaime said, 'and Two: I'm not _sooking_ over getting stitches. Let's not start with war stories, alright, because your branch-skewering tale would be like, a _non-event _compared to what... well, let's just not start. I'm merely a tad concerned about your qualifications in the... medical area. And the hygiene of your equipment. I don't want a raging infection in my face.'

She didn't reply, kept walking towards the river. In truth she couldn't remember a thing about the incident with her mother and the stitches. She only knew the story because her mother had told it to her and others, often, as an example of her bravery. She had two scars on her arm where stitches had obviously been, but she may have been in shock or numbed by other means when they were done. Who cares, it was a good story. She loved that story.

'Infection? Hygiene?' she snorted, after a while. 'Why would you suddenly start caring? Only, your face don't look too _professionally_ tended to, to me. It looks like it's been attacked by a huge cheese grater and rolled in sewerage.'

He clicked his fingers. 'That's uncanny. That's pretty much exactly what they did to it.'

She allowed a smile to creep onto her face. 'Who is this _they_? Where did you come from, anyway?'

'Uh-uh. No questions, remember.'

'Alright, I remember.'

They had reached the river. She filled a smaller pot with clean running water, then set about making a fire. Jaime watched her as she boiled the water and got out of the saddle bag all the things she was going to need: scissors, a needle, salt, a pot of foul-smelling ointment. She unwrapped thread and a bandage, arranged all her implements near a large dead tree trunk lying on its side, then turned to him.

'Sit down.'

He reluctantly sat on the other end of the trunk. 'Do you know what you're doing?' He eyed the thick needle she was threading.

'How hard can it be?' she said, 'I've made clothes.'

'Dear gods,' he muttered.

She moved close to him, her side touching his. She leant an arm against his shoulder to steady him, then dipped the clean cloth in the boiled water, wrung it out and held it firmly on his cut for a moment. The blood had slowed to a steady pulse. She swirled the tip of the needle back in the hot water and pressed her free hand to his forehead. 'Hold still,' she ordered.

He screwed up his face a little. 'Fuck I hope you know what you're doing.'

'I'm a delivery person, trust me.'

'I feel so reassured.'

She pinched his broken skin together in the fingers of her left hand, then pushed the sharp point of the needle into the section underneath; it made a tiny but distinct cracking sound as the point went it. _ His skin must be thick_. She gripped the length of metal as it slid out from the flap of skin on the top, and pulled the thread through. To Jaime's credit, he didn't even twitch. She repeated the action, and then paused to wipe some blood away with the cloth.

'I guess I deserve this,' he conceded.

'Shush.' She put the cloth down, picked up the needle again. Concentrating, she put another two evenly spaced stitches through his eyebrow. Jaime's eyes didn't even water, which surprised her. Maybe he wasn't kidding about his war stories.

'There, done,' she said, snipping the end of thread off with her scissors, 'I told you it wasn't so bad.'

'It kind of hurt.'

She snorted. 'Well you should pick your fights better.'

'I thought I had. I just forgot to factor in your killer horse, I don't know _how _that could've escaped my notice.'

'I did warn you.'

'Did you? "Why don't you try something and see...?" ' he quoted her earlier comment. 'I thought that was a dare, not a warning. Maybe you should be more specific with your next fellow travellers...'Hey everyone, just for future reference? The horse is a fucking lunatic.''

'Don't let her hear you say that.'

Jaime turned and held his hands up in appeasement in Sooty's direction. 'Sorry. I was being facetious.' He looked back at the girl. 'I should've known it was a lunatic. Yesterday?'

'Yeah. What of it.'

'I tried to get on your horse then, while you were dead to the world... I thought I could ride on back to the road, make it to KingsLanding by myself. That was always my plan, as soon as I saw you. Steal your horse, leave. But, yeah. Ha.' He lifted his cuffed wrists and felt his stitches gingerly with his fingertips. 'The horse had other ideas. So, I should've known.'

The girl got up and gathered her things._ Well, at least he's confessing to it. That's something._ 'I don't know what you were thinking, then. Seriously. Are you suffering from delusions? We're more than a week's ride from KingsLanding, not that you'd know how to get there on the back roads by yourself. If you ran into a local Tribesman out here you'd be in big trouble, especially on my horse, who pretty much everyone around here knows. If you headed off along the King's Road, in handcuffs, you might not fare any better. But yeah, good planning. Smart.' She tapped her temple sarcastically. 'And that stunt before, pretending to be drunk and then stealing my keys, because I decided I couldn't trust you? You didn't even take any supplies. You'd've been sitting on the road again in a day or two like how I first found you, except someone else a lot less nice than me would've found you.' She shook her head at his inexplicable behaviour. For once, he didn't say anything,

She sighed. 'Maybe if we eat something, we'll feel better.' Her mouth was throbbing, and it hurt to swallow. But Jaime had got the worst of it. Being struck in the head by a horse's hoof was no joke. _He's lucky it didn't fracture his skull. _He deserved it of course, for hurting her and being stupid. But she still felt bad for him.

She stood up, took the keys to the lock out of her pocket, and walked over to Sooty. She unclicked the lock and let the chain drop onto the ground. Jaime watched her in silence. She put the lock back in one of the bags, then unharnessed Sooty and told her to go. The horse trotted a little distance away, circled, then, buckling at the knees, she thumped onto a sandy patch of ground and rolled. After two complete flips with her legs in the air she staggered back to her feet and shook herself, spraying dust in a cloud. The girl smiled inwardly, she loved watching Sooty roll off the day's work and become a free horse again for a few hours. She watched the horse until she'd disappeared into the bush, then turned back to the fire. Jaime hadn't moved.

'You're free to go, if you want,' she said. 'For whatever reason you've decided you're better off on your own... it's fine. Go, if you want.'

Jaime still didn't move off the log. He looked tired, and his forehead was swelling up.

'I mean you could've talked to me about it. You didn't have to smack me in the mouth and strangle me.'

He gave a tired grin. 'When I decided we'd be better off going our separate ways, I didn't think you'd take too kindly to not being paid 500 gold coins.'

'I'm guessing the subtext here is... you don't actually have 500 gold coins.'

'Hey, I've got them. I don't know if you'll want them from me though when...' he trailed off.

'When what?' she asked.

'Nothing.'

She stared at him. 'So.'

'So.'

'Will you be heading off, then?'

He twisted his mouth up in a wry expression and looked away. 'I don't feel my normal robust self right now, to be honest. For some reason, I have a splitting headache.'

They looked at each other for a long moment. She smiled. 'I'll get us some food.'


	4. Wine

She boiled the eggs, sliced them with her knife, tossed in the few remaining vegetables and beans. There was no meat left. The sun was starting to get low in the sky and the air had a cool bite. She was annoyed at losing so much time to this whole venture, annoyed with herself for letting a, _let's face it_ she thought, half-starved and sorry-looking prisoner catch her off guard as he'd done. A severe lapse of judgement on her part. She also felt shitty because she couldn't really blame him for getting away from her after she'd chained him to the horse. But that made her by comparison, a failure.

She took the meal over to the log where Jaime sat, and handed him a bowl. Then she sat down near the fire and ate hers, which was more difficult than she expected due to her swollen lip. She chewed carefully, but bits of food kept falling out on one side.

'Do you want mine?' She gave up, and handed her bowl backwards to Jaime.

'Can't you eat?' he asked, taking it. He sounded genuinely guilty, which made her feel a little better. It didn't stop him eating her food though. She sipped from her water flask, trying not to think about how hungry she was. _Shouldn't have given him my food. What's left now, bread? Great. _She stared into the flames, trying to stifle the feelings rising in her that this was all so unfair. _Why did I get talked into doing this, anyway, I could be at Blackhills tavern by now, sleeping in an actual bed. I could be getting some decent jobs. Not gallivanting through the bush for the promise of riches that have a high likelihood of not even existing. Because I felt sorry for some vagrant. _

The girl had been independent a long time. For years she'd supported what was left of her family in the hills with the money she made delivering both legal and illegal goods, and kept herself below the radar of soldiers and law-men. Beholden to no-one, a free entity. Her mother had always told her that was how it should be, that she was safe because she was free. All she had to do was be discreet and fair with her customers, keep to her own business, and she'd live happily ever after. _No-one can hurt you, if they can't see you, _her mother had said. But now her mother was gone. And the girl didn't believe in happily ever after stories.

Impulsively, she got up and went over to the packs, hunting through them until she found the second flask of wine. She took it with her back to the fire and sat down.

'Are you going to drink that?' Jaime asked.

'Some.' She didn't normally drink. She liked to have all her wits about her. She liked to be in control. But tonight she felt strangely rebellious, like the day had gone to shit, her stomach was churning with hunger, and now this was going to be her reward for putting up with it all. What exactly she was rebelling against she wasn't quite clear in her head about; her mother's words, her own exacting standards of conduct? Whatever. She felt rebellious. Never mind that she didn't even _like_ wine, had never drunk more than a cup or two at family gatherings. And that had been home-made, mild and dry. Not this potent brew. She flicked the top off the flask with her thumb and it popped into the air and was immediately lost in the dim evening light. She took this as a sign that she wouldn't be putting it back on.

'Do you think that's wise?' Jaime said, although he sounded more amused than concerned. 'Drinking on an empty stomach.'

'As much as I value your feedback, _Jaime-ee,_' she emphasised the last syllable,' If that even is your actual name.. I think I can make my own decisions.'

'Of course. I'm simply advising.'

'Fuck _advice_.'

Jaime smirked. 'You remind me of someone.'

'Really? Is he fucking amazing?'

Sniffing the contents of the open flask didn't calm her stomach much, it made her distinctly queasy. It smelled astringent, with a hint of rotten fruit. She held the flask away from her nose, and behind her Jaime chuckled.

'She, actually. And yeah, she's pretty amazing. Look, that so-called 'wine' you have there? It will knock you out. I can smell it from here.'

'You had some. How bad can it be?'

'I only had those first couple of mouthfuls, and trust me, it was pretty bad. The rest I dumped out along the way.'

'Clever,' she said. She lifted up the flask and tipped it into her mouth. As soon as she felt the liquid brim against the back of her teeth she closed her lips and swallowed without tasting. Immediately a searing rush of fumes spread up into her nose and eyes, like she was on fire inside her skull. She put her head down, pressed her lips together to stop from coughing, but some still splurted out of the corner of her lip. She made a strangled sound, wondered if she was going to hurl it right back up again.

Jaime laughed genuinely, and as she raised her head, blinking the tears from her eyes, she stifled a laugh too. 'Steady, no need to hurt yourself,' he said.

'I'd think you'd be happy, ' she shot back. 'Save you the trouble of doing it.'

'Hey, I'm sorry you took that assault on your self personally. I just don't do captivity very well. But, it was wrong of me, and I promise, I won't try it again.' Jamie made everything sound like a joke, even the fact he'd attacked her, and she knew she should've cared, but she didn't. Right now, she couldn't be bothered caring about anything.

'Sure. Sure you won't.' She took another big gulp of the wine. It burned down her sore throat and she felt as if steaming flames jetted from her nose and eye sockets. But in a couple of seconds that faded and the pain in her neck and lip faded with it. She felt as light as the glowing sparks dancing and swirling up out of the fire. She burped quietly. Ridiculous, that she'd been so disapproving of him drinking this stuff earlier. _I really_ _can be a uptight bitch sometimes_. She twisted around and offered the flask to him. He was still laughing at her. 'Go on, have some. I _insist_,' she said with saccharine sweetness.

'I don't know if I should... that looks positively toxic.'

She shook the flask to tempt him. 'If you don't, I'll have to drink it all myself, and then you'll have my death on your conscience.'

'I think you're presuming I have a conscience,' Jaime said. He tipped his head to one side as if to stretch his neck. Rested his elbows on his knees. 'Nevertheless, I feel obliged to rescue you from suicide by alcohol poisoning.' He leaned over and took the proffered flask. The girl sat up and swivelled her legs around to face him. He brought the wine to his mouth with exaggerated caution, and pulled a mock-horrified face. She was already giggling by the time he sipped experimentally from it.

'Fuck, this is worse than I remembered.' He swigged at it and screwed up his face, shaking his head madly from side to side before swallowing. 'Your turn.' He passed it back.

'Does that help?' she asked.

'Does what help.'

'Pulling that face?'

'Yes it does, as a matter of fact. If you don't pull that face, this crap will corrode your gums and all your teeth will fall straight out. Don't say I didn't warn you, girl.'

She lifted it up to her mouth, already recoiling from the pungent aroma. 'How is...' she began, starting to laugh for no real reason except that Jaime was suddenly also laughing, 'How is this, this _shit_... even wine?'

'Look, they call it wine. I don't know what goes into it. I don't know how they process it. I'm fairly sure it's the main reason most citizens of the South die young.'

'Yeah isn't wine s'posed to be,' she stopped laughing long enough to sniff at it again, 'at least somewhat enjoyable?'

'You're expecting too much,' Jaime said, 'Stop smelling it for one thing. We already know it smells like the septic pit in the King's whorehouse and tastes worse. Just scull it down, and try not to let it come in contact with any of your sensory organs on the way.'

'How do you know what the King's septic pit smells like?'

'So I've been told.'

'Oh. So you've been told.' She did as he'd suggested, tipping a good quantity of liquid straight down her throat. This time she coughed and laughed so much she nearly toppled over. Jaime leaned down and grabbed her arm with his cuffed hands, helping her sit upright again. He took the now three-quarters-empty flask off her and rested it against the log he was sitting on.

'Good?' he asked, when she stopped spluttering.

'Realllly tasty,' she said. Her face felt hot and her mouth numb. She felt wonderful, actually. 'Let's go for a walk.'

Jaime looked doubtful.

'C'mon, I need a walk,' she declared, standing up. 'And you're coming with me.'

'Yeah, I realise you're slightly delirious from having drunk enough Southern rotgut to kill a goat, but it's getting dark and I may have concussion. Plus, I'm a bit restricted.' He raised his hands to demonstrate.

'Fuck.' She sat down again. 'That's so inconvenient.'

'True.'

The girl pouted, looking around for the wine flask. When she couldn't see it, she crawled over to the fire and patted the ground with her hand until she found her water bottle. She crawled back to Jaime and sat in front of him again.

'Thirsty?' he asked.

She nodded and tried to flip open the top, but it was stuck. She frowned and dug her thumb under the lid with no success, until Jaime reached down and took it off her. He deftly unscrewed the lid and handed it back. This was so ironic to her that she burst out laughing and couldn't stop. Jaime had to take the water off her so she wouldn't spill it all.

'C'mere,' he said, patting the spot next to him on the log, where she'd sat when she'd stitched his cut earlier. She scrambled up onto it, it was quite big and weathered smooth, the surface curved around like a horse's girth. She could still put her feet flat on the ground either side with her legs slightly bent.

'Water now,' she said. Her voice didn't come out quite right. Jaime was regarding her with such amusement she wondered what exactly was so funny. She reached for the flask and he held it up out of her grasp, pushing her hands down with his cuffs. 'No, girl,' he admonished. 'You'll only spill it on yourself.' He waited until she sat back compliantly, then he brought the container down to her face and angled it up so that a few drops trickled onto her lips.

The cool water felt good. It ran onto her tongue and she swallowed. 'Don't move,' he said soothingly. 'Your mouth is all swollen.' He put the flask down, then rubbed the ball of his thumb gently across her bottom lip. The sting of it made her gasp a little and her lips parted. Jaime stared at her, for a long time. It felt like a long time, anyway. She could feel her heart jumping in her chest. Jaime seemed to be searching her face. 'You even look like her,' he murmured. Then he bent his head and softly pressed his lips to hers.

His beard was scratchy and she hesitated, then relaxed. Blood rushed to her face, the alcohol surged through her body, and her inhibitions were dissolved like sand castles before a tidal wave. She hummed in her throat with pleasure. The small sound had the same effect on Jaime as a gust of oxygen to a glowing ember, his breath grew rough, his hands tightened on her top and the weight of his body pushed her backwards. She opened her mouth wide and their tongues twisted against each other. She could taste her own blood from the cut on her lip, but felt unable to stop herself, as if she was in a dream. A dream _where she could do whatever she_ _wanted._

Jaime's chest was a solid wall but she pressed her hands into it and shoved at him, until he reluctantly pulled his mouth off hers and sat back. 'What...?' he complained, his eyes almost black in the warm glow from the fire, widening as she put her fingers under her top and lifted it over her head. 'Hey...' he breathed. She pulled her undershirt off in the same way, then stood up, swaying a little as she straddled the log with her legs. Her knife holster unfastened easily, she threw it away towards the packs.

'What are you thiiiinking?' she teased, slurring her words slightly.

'Wish I wasn't wearing these handcuffs, for one,' he growled, not taking his eyes off her.

She laughed, lightly, easily. She felt as weightless as a feather. She hooked her thumbs into the waist of her pants and pushed them down, lifting up one leg and stepping free of them. Jamie didn't move but she could hear him breathing heavily. Now she had on only the strip of cloth that was her underwear. Basking in the intensity of his gaze, she undid the fastening on the side and the material fell down one leg to her ankle. She kicked her foot, and then she was naked.

She sat back down on the log, her knees apart.

Jaime stared at her as she leant in towards him. 'What are you thinking, now?' she whispered. She reached over and, with the back of her fingers, brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. 'I'm thinking,' he said, his voice ragged, 'You should drink more often.'


	5. Secrets

She woke up. Felt warm and peaceful and more relaxed than she'd been in a long time. She lay still, savouring the rare feeling of contentment. Then, she remembered. The images that sprang into her consciousness in all their raw and vivid detail made her inhale sharply and her face get hot. _Oh. Fuck. But this was going to be an awkward morning._

She flipped back the blankets and got to her feet. Upright, her head spun. Her mouth felt twice its normal size. It was before-dawn cold and she quickly pulled on her jacket, shook the sand out of her discarded pants and shuffled into her boots. A surreptitious glance behind her at Jamie's blanket-covered form confirmed that he was still asleep. Or at least pretending to be. Either way, she didn't have to deal with him right now. Which meant she had some time to process her thoughts. Oh but... those thoughts. _Dear gods_. Where to start? She could hardly keep from burying her face in her hands at the memory. _ Had a warg infiltrated her body last night? Because that was not her normal manner of behaving._

She decided distraction was the best remedy. The fire looked cold and dead, of course she hadn't banked it before falling asleep. Or, passing out. Whichever had happened. Their food supply was pretty low, there was another thing to preoccupy herself with. Good.

She grabbed her holster where it lay on the ground, checked the knife, pouch and keys were all still attached. _I may be the stupidest delivery person ever, but today luck is with me_ she thought, gratefully. She set to work gathering up the smaller branches around the clearing, using the sturdiest one to stir up the ashes and uncover a still-glowing log. Air fanned a tiny wisp of blue and orange flame out of its centre, and as it licked along the length of black wood she fed it twigs and watched it grow. Satisfied, she grabbed the pot and walked over to the river.

A movement downstream caught her attention, and she stopped. A man in familiar Tribesmen garb was casting his net out into the current. He saw her and after a moment, raised his hand in greeting. She waved back. He tied his net off to the trunk of a tree and started making his way towards her. She glanced back up behind herself. The undergrowth was thick by the river bank, and from where she stood the camp they'd made last night couldn't be seen.

'What are you doing in these parts?' the man called out in greeting as he approached, keeping his eyes on the rocky river bank so as not to slip.

'The usual. Deliveries,' she replied. 'How are the fish today? Are you pulling in any of those big trout I've seen being sold down at the Corner?'

He didn't take her lead and talk about his catch. He walked up to her slowly, a smile on his face that didn't reach his eyes. 'Deliveries, eh? Well. Thought you worked the King's Road and down into the villages. Who's up here in need of your services?' His tone was friendly but the girl felt uneasy. She recognised him from the markets they both frequented. He was always trying to scam someone, a natural-born salesman. Those who bought from him didn't find out until they got home that their purchases were invariably a few short, often not even the actual items he spruiked them as. The girl knew; in the past she'd been employed by him to pick up wares from somewhere for a pittance and deliver them to him so he could sell them on for five times as much. She had to admire those qualities in a person.

This morning though, she didn't want him around. Her head throbbed badly, the sun was too bright, and even normal conversation seemed an ordeal. Let alone the necessary lies she'd have to spin to send him on his way.

'The Dryfields down in the valley needed some wine urgently, an unexpected arrival,' she told him. 'Some long-thought-dead family member turning up, with most of his limbs still attached. I just happened to be passing through the junction shortly after the happy reunion. A profitable detour for me.' The girl tried to keep her voice steady, casual. She could smell the fish on the man's hands, and it made her stomach roil.

'Dryfields, now there's a name you don't hear often,' he said. 'Is old man Dryfield still a recluse down there? Still making his little pots of secret spices?'

'I wouldn't think so. He's been dead nearly a year.' The girl knew the man knew this too, but it was all part of the game. She just didn't feel like playing today. She felt like vomiting.

The man sniffed the air, looked up the way she'd come. 'You got a fire going up there?'

'Yeah. Stopped for a cup of tea.' The girl held up her pot. She was trying to breathe through her mouth, the stench of old fish infused in his clothes and skin was overpowering.

'Ah, nothing better on a cold morning. You got a spare cup?' The man smiled pleasantly.

'I'm travelling light,' she said. 'The trip was short notice, I didn't even pack a change of clothes.'

'Maybe I could share your cup,' the man said, stepping in close. The girl forced herself to control her instinct to step back. His over-familiar tone and invasion of her personal space was nothing she hadn't dealt with before. If only she didn't feel so nauseous, and her brain would stop thudding against her skull.

'I have a weird fever,' she said. 'I probably wouldn't.' Under her shirt, her fingers brushed on the bulge of her knife by her hip.

'Really? A fever.'

'Yeah. Dizzy spells. I couldn't even ride my horse the last few miles, I thought I was going to fall off.'

At the mention of her horse, the man stepped quickly away from her and looked around. 'Your horse, I remember that beast. Is it... nearby?'

'I could whistle her up for you.'

'That's alright, no need.' The man backed away, turning in the direction of his fishing spot further down the river. 'Safe travels. I'll see you around the usual.' He hurried over the rocks, occasionally glancing up into the trees as if checking for horse-shaped figures charging at him. The girl smiled to herself. Sooty's reputation had taken many years to develop, but now she was a local legend.

Once the man had gone, the girl walked down the bank and, using some fallen branches as footholds, leaned over and dipped the pot into the current. The fast-moving water was cold as liquid ice. She brought up her wet hand and wiped it over her face; the wind stung her wet skin but it had the desired effect of clearing her head and settling her belly. She gulped down some water from the pot, re-filled it, and headed back to the camp, feeling slightly more awake.

Jaime was also awake. He was lying on his side looking in her direction as she came through the trees, propped on one elbow with his cuffed hands out of the blanket. His left eyebrow was smudged black with bruising that nearly closed his eye, but he still looked pleased with himself. 'Hey,' he said.

'Hey,' she replied. There was a long silence.

Self-conscious, she went to the fire to hang the pot over it, but fumbled and slopped water over the side. A cloud of steam hissed up at her. Flustered, she began poking at the coals with a stick, aimlessly, but she was so aware of Jaime's presence that she couldn't concentrate on anything else. Nor could she think of a single thing to say to him.

'How are you feeling this morning?' His voice, slightly gravelly from sleep, sent little shudders through her body. _Ugh. Pull yourself together, _she chided herself. _ You're stronger than this, you can cope with a... temporary loss of control... without losing your shit like a 12 year old after her first kiss_

'Fine'. She didn't look up. 'You?'

'I'm feeling much improved,' he murmured. 'I had this amazing dream.'

'Do tell.' She looked over at him with what she hoped was wordly nonchalance, but her mouth twitched. Despite her jittery nerves and the disorienting sense of everything she knew from yesterday being unfamiliar today, she found that what she wanted, more than anything, was to keep looking into Jaime's eyes. It was difficult to tear her gaze away.

'I forget.' He yawned, showing his straight white teeth. 'Soooo...' he feigned a brief interest in his surroundings before his gaze returned and captured hers again. 'That wine was something else, huh? I can't remember a thing about last night.'

She raised her hand to her mouth to hide her smile.

'It was an unmemorable evening,' she said, coolly. 'I seem to recall we played cards at one point.'

'That's right,' he snapped his fingers. 'I think I lost my shirt to you. You should've warned me you were such a shark.'

'Where's the fun in knowing everything about someone?' she commented mildly.

'Where indeed,' he agreed.

She looked into his green eyes and got the distinct feeling that things were slipping slowly out of her control. It was hard to pull back, hard to focus on what needed to be done today, when all she could think of was yesterday. She forced the disquietening images out of her head. 'I had a visitor down by the river,' she said, abruptly. 'Let's get out of here.'

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

By the time they'd packed up, the sun had lightened the sky to pale grey and it was almost warm. They headed upstream along the river, doubled on Sooty's broad back. They needed to make up time. Although they kept to the cover of the trees, she checked every so often for a narrowing of the river banks, a place they could swim across. Bridges, according to her people-shy companion, were with towns and main roads on the Things To Avoid list. Despite the delays, she figured they were less than a day's ride from RedHollow, a small village she knew well. She could leave Jaime in hiding somewhere and go buy, borrow or steal something with a big enough blade to smash his cuffs off. That should make him happy. Why his happiness was suddenly important to her was something she decided to examine another day. For now, she simply accepted that it was.

_We're going to have to get across this river, but it's nice weather, _she mused. _ I'm a good swimmer, so's Sooty. Can Jaime swim?_ _ Well, Sooty can drag him along. Drying our clothes will be the problem. Probably everything in the packs is going to get wet, I'll have to keep the lighter and tinder dry somehow. Will our clothes dry over a fire, overnight?_ She supposed she could cuddle up to Sooty to keep warm, but what about Jaime? Using Jaime to keep warm was a thought she also pushed aside for the time being.

Jaime was quiet, for once. She noticed that he was looking around at their surroundings more, and wondered if he was familiar with this area.

'Let's stop and eat', she decided, when the sun was at its high point above them.

She reined in Sooty, and jumped off. Jaime watched as she pulled the food bag open and got out the only food they had left; bread. He looked like he wanted to comment on the meal options again, but restrained himself.

'Are we close to where we're meant to cross? Near that village you told me about?' he asked instead.

'Why? Keen on getting them off?' She nodded at his wrists.

'It's been a long time,' he said. 'I'll have to learn to do everything all over again, with hands.'

'Well, be thankful you have hands. There are people around here who love to chop hands off,' she cautioned.

Jaime grinned. 'I'm pretty quick with my hands, when they're not chained together. I doubt anyone could hold one down long enough.'

'You'd be surprised how many single-handed folks around here once had that same belief,' the girl said.

Jaime tossed his crust of bread into the bushes. 'Gods, could we get some decent food at this village of yours, too? Something that was once running around on four legs would be good.'

They rested a while, her on the ground, Jaime leaning on a large rock. Sooty took the opportunity to graze some tussocks of grass growing in the splotchy sunlight that filtered through the leaves overhead. The girl allowed her thoughts to drift to last night. Jaime. Her. The look in his eyes, his lips. The feel of him inside her.

'You were so chatty yesterday,' Jaime interrupted her daydream. 'Now today you've gone all quiet.'

He took the water off the stone she'd set it down on, unscrewed the cap and sculled the rest of the contents. She glanced over at him while he was drinking. His head tipped back, adam's apple moving up and down; the tendons in the V of his neck standing out. He'd washed his skin clean in the river but his hair was still so dirty it looked black and fell in thick strands down the side of his face. She remembered the dry texture of them as she'd brushed them out of his eyes with the back of her fingers. She didn't realise she was staring until he turned to look at her.

'Um,' she said. She folded the rest of the bread back into the cloth and stowed it into the saddle-pack, turning her back to him and inwardly cursing her lack of composure.

He walked over and stood behind her. She could feel his body warmth on the back of her neck. The chain from his wrists clanked as he held the water bottle out to her over her shoulder.

'About last night -' she turned around. He waited, watching her. She could feel her cheeks heating up. 'I'm sorry if I was... forward.'

'I'm not.'

She sighed. 'Alright, I'm not either, not really. When I woke up today I... I thought I'd made a big mistake.'

'What do you think now?' he asked.

'I don't know. I'm trying not to... think about it too much.'

'Too much? So you _are_ thinking about it.'

'Well. Sometimes.' She laughed a little. 'Got me.'

Jaime leaned back, appraised her seriously. 'Do you trust me?'

'As far as I trust anyone.' _No,_ she thought_. _'But I feel safe with you, if that counts for anything.'

'After I get these cuffs off, you may change your mind.'

'Do _you_ trust _me_?' She turned his question back on him.

'I don't even know your name.'

'No-one uses it much. I'm just the Delivery Girl.'

'Surely your family don't call you 'The Delivery Girl'.'

She looked away over the river. The water shimmered, dark shapes moving under its surface. 'My family are... there's just my sister and me. Her kids. My mother died many years ago, and my father killed himself. He could cope with my mother dying, but not... not everything else.'

'Oh. I'm sorry.' Jaime said, sincerely. 'Losing family is hard.'

'I had a little brother,' she continued, gazing away to the far banks of the river and beyond it, to the grassy hills sprinkled with white flowers, the purple shadows of shifting clouds scudding across them, as if Jaime hadn't spoken. 'We weren't living together. He was only 13. I was already on my own then, delivering. He lived with our father.' Her eyes didn't focus on the view, as pretty as it was. Her eyes looked inside herself and saw someone who was still an essential part of her, even though she had no idea where his blood had soaked into the earth, where his bones lay, or what animals had picked them clean.

'I have a brother too.' Jaime sympathised. 'I'd kill anyone who tried to hurt him. What happened to yours?'

'He was killed,' she said, turning at last her face Jaime. Her eyes were flinty and cold. 'Murdered.'


	6. Brodrick

They walked until late afternoon, but the river never looked like narrowing. The girl could clearly remember a place where fallen earth and boulders from an old landslide had pushed one bank out and created a bottleneck, where the distance to the opposite bank was greatly reduced, but she couldn't remember exactly where it was. She was also wary that other travellers with shady intentions, who needed to keep off the major thoroughfares, would likely be around at a non-traditional river crossing. Seeing as it was pretty much the only safe spot to cross, if bridges were not on your agenda.

At a high point of ground she stood on a ledge of rock that jutted out and looked along the river into the distance, squinting her eyes to try and better make out any narrowing in its snaking shape.

'What's the verdict?' Jaime asked. He was sitting on the ground behind her, using Sooty's body to block the sun. The man and horse appeared to have settled into an uneasy truce. Away from the cover of the trees it was uncommonly hot. Midges hung in a dense cloud near the water.

'Still nothing'. She turned and stood facing the trees, trying to decide whether to keep going, or take another break until it cooled down. Her clothes stuck to her skin and her mouth felt dry even though she'd just had a drink. Of course, the hangover wasn't helping. She was tempted to jump in the water, but the current had become fast-flowing and unpredictable, full of whirlpools. The bank was steep, stony and falling sharply into black pools that she knew were very deep.

She looked over at Jaime. His hair was wet with sweat, and he held his arms out in front of him to keep the metal chain away from his body. The cuffs reflected light as he moved them, stretching his fingers.

'I'm sorry you're stuck with those,' she said, nodding at the manacles. 'I wish we'd reached the Hollow today, and I'd been able to get a hold of something to remove them.' As she said these words, she recognised a shift in her normal view of the world. Beyond her family, it was unlike her to care about other people's problems. Normally she could detach, stay distanced. Jaime had gotten to her. _The metal must be burning his skin, _she thought, and she could almost feel the burn on her own wrists.

Jaime puffed air out with his lower lip to blow his limp fringe off his forehead, where it was sticking to his stitches. 'Thank you for feeling sorry for me. I feel sorry for you too, being stuck with me. I haven't been very trust-worthy. I'm causing you serious delays. You're no doubt ruing the day we met.'

'Well, yes and no,' she said. She couldn't help smiling, and it gave away her thoughts.

'There have been good moments,' he admitted.

'Yep.' She blushed. Her face was already red from the hot day, hopefully Jaime wouldn't notice. She stammered on, 'I... I figure it had been... um... a while since you... had a good moment. Like the other night. A moment.' _Best shut up now, you're making a fool of yourself. _

Jaime was gracious enough not to make fun of her. 'Well, yes. It has, _had, _definitely been a very long time. I only had ever been, previous to you I mean, been with one girl. Intimately. So... it was a bit of a first for me, as moments go.' Jaime paused. The silence between them dragged on a bit too long. 'Look, are we speaking about fucking each other last night? Because if you're talking about the stew, I mean, that was great too - ' he feigned innocent bewilderment.

She burst out laughing. 'You're - ' she wiped at her eyes, trying to stop laughing, unsuccessfully. 'You're really funny. Yeah, that's what we're talking about. Idiot.' She raised her water bottle to her mouth, took a gulp.

'I thought so.' Jaime said, dead-pan. 'I mean, to be honest, your stew really wasn't that great.'

She spluttered into laughter again, spraying water. 'I know. Well. I have other skills.

'Yes. You do.'

'I hope it was enjoyable, even though it wasn't with, y'know. Your girl.'

'It was, very. Enjoyable.'

She took a deep breath, let it out. They looked at each other. She felt soft inside, like when she'd drunk the wine, like little bubbles were fizzing all around her body. 'Thanks. For making me laugh. I... I don't laugh much. It's nice.'

'Hey, it's nothing.' Jaime smiled. 'You seemed a little down back there, talking about your brother. I hope I cheered you up.'

'You have. Thank you. It's hard to talk about him. I feel like I unburdened on you too much, I don't know why. Normally I don't talk about him. It still hurts, a lot. To talk about him.' The girl bent her head, the sun prickling the back of her hair.

'How long has it been? Since...?'

'Over a year, now.'

'Well. Time will make it better.'

'No. I don't think so.' She straightened up. 'C'mon let's keep going.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

'What's that?' she said, as Sooty halted. The girl peered out into the fast growing dusk, the sun now gone and the temperature dropping so rapidly that puffs of steam rose from her lips.

'Did you hear something?' Jaime asked behind her.

'Sooty did. Her ears...' she pointed at the horse's ears which were pricked straight up, her neck raised and her whole body beneath them still.

The girl slid down off the saddle. 'You stay here,' she whispered to Jaime. The sound of hoof beats came faintly up ahead, and for a second she thought of turning back and running, but then the distinct, much closer sound of a man's boots made her freeze.

'Hey!' A voice called, out of sight in the darkness. The figure of a man moved into view on the track, carrying a dim light, then two more. They stared in the direction of Sooty where she stood behind a screen of tangled branches, maybe trying to decide what she was. The girl stepped out away from the horse, so they could see her.

'Hey!' She greeted them. 'We're travellers. There's only two of us, on our way to RedHollow.' She walked towards the men as one of them raised his lantern, stopping when she was close enough in the circle of light thrown by it for them to see her. A fourth man had come up and now stood beside the others, leading a pack horse. She recognised this particular man, he lived in RedHollow and had a large family of unruly kids, who he supported by being an accomplished poacher of game from nearby estates.

'I know you,' a different man said.

The girl held out her hands, palms up. 'I used to frequent these parts often.'

'Not usually this side of the river, though,' the man said. 'These tracks are more for hunters, not travellers. Why didn't you cross at the bridge, if you want to get to the Hollow?'

The girl looked slightly embarrassed. 'I think... I think I got lost. It's been a while since I've been here. We went off the road chasing a goat and then it got dark and, we must have missed the bridge.' She smiled guilelessly.

'Well there's not another bridge for many miles. You'd best turn back. These tracks wander all over, you'll only get more lost.'

'Yes, I think we will do that. We were about to make camp for the night. Tomorrow we'll head back to the bridge.'

'And what is your business there, Delivery Girl? Are you trading goods?' the poacher asked. The back of his horse was laden with the corpses of deer and pheasants, they'd obviously done well for themselves.

'Just passing on messages, mainly,' the girl said, casually. 'Some salt and spices from further North. Maybe buy an axe.'

The poacher looked curious. 'What sort of an axe?'

'Or a broadsword. Cutlass. Hatchet. Anything with a heavy blade, easy to swing.' She shrugged. 'I may visit Cole, if he's still the smith at the Hollow. If the army haven't recruited him yet.'

'Nah, his leg keeps him out,' the poacher said, and the other men laughed at this. 'That leg injury comes and goes whenever it's convient! Yes, Cole's still there. A good friend of your father's. I'm sure he'll have a decent blade for you.'

She nodded. She hoped they might be on their way without further questions, but the group seemed in no great hurry. The first man who'd spoken leaned on a tree and picked at his teeth, spat, then said 'So, why the axe? Is delivery work so slow these days that you're planning a new career slitting logs?' He grinned at her. 'Or is it an executioner you have your mind set on? I always thought you'd make a fine one. Old Sooty there,' he gestured behind the girl to where her horse still stood half-hidden in the shadows, 'would definitely be an asset in that line of work.'

She kept the smile on her face. 'You know how it is,' she said. 'With the war on. A girl alone can't be too careful.'

'This damned war,' the man agreed. 'With so many men away fighting, the one's left are finding it hard to keep order in the villages. The King, the Starks, the Lannisters, the Baratheons, all at each other's throats. None of them care about us. Desperate times. Crazy times.'

The girl smiled and nodded. 'I try to stay out of politics, ' she said, pleasantly. 'I wouldn't even know who was who.' This wasn't far from the truth. She knew of the boy King and his family and wished them all dead, despite never having laid eyes on them. But that was for personal reasons, and not because she had an allegiance to any House. Who ran the country was of no concern to her. She'd keep on slipping under their notice, skirting the laws, as she'd always done.

'I'd say there's little difference between them all in the end,' the man said.

'Brodrick is somewhat of an expert in the matter,' one of the other men volunteered. 'Being an ex-soldier and all. He's fought for the North many times in minor skirmishes, been to the Capital to talk tactics with Robert Baratheon and his King's Guard, back when he sat on the Throne. Brod here knows them all.' The man leaning against the tree acknowledged this. 'I've seen the whole Royal Family in the flesh,' he said.

The girl tuned the conversation out. As if she cared who he knew. Unless he was an assassin she could hire to cut the boy King's heart out, she didn't give a flying fuck about his name-dropping. She wished they would hurry up and leave.

'I was sorry to hear about your father,' the poacher said, changing the subject. 'The war has many victims.'

The girl felt herself stiffen. 'He wasn't a war victim,' she said.

'And yet the death of his son was the reason behind his own death. I realise he took his life, girl, but the reason behind what happened to his son was war. A sad yet common tale these days. Yours is not the only loss.'

The girl's heart rate began to increase, she felt a tightness in her chest and her fists clenched. She recognised in herself the signs of a furious rage, and struggled to control her voice. 'My brother wasn't a _war victim, _either,' she said. 'He was _murdered.'_

'Yes,' the poacher answered. 'But we all know why.'

The girl gritted her teeth. She forced herself to breathe steadily, to focus; she gripped her hands together as hard as she could. Anything to stop the overwhelming anger inside of her from rising up and spilling over into words or actions she knew she'd regret. _Calm down_, she told herself sternly. _There are four of them, and one of you. These men are not the enemy. The King and his family are the enemy. Calm down._

'Well, good luck in your travels, Delivery Girl,' the poacher said. 'I hope you find your way back to the bridge alright, and if Cole can't help you out, the Innkeeper at the Crossroads always has spare steel.'

'I don't ever go to the Crossroads any more,' she said, a chill settling on her spine at the name. 'But thank you for the information.'

The men nodded and made as if to go on past. The girl moved aside to give them room, and watched as they headed along the track. As they drew level with the spot where Sooty was standing, the man they'd referred to as Brodrick paused. 'Who's your companion up there?' he called back.

'A vagrant,' she said. 'Some unfortunate prisoner of the war I picked up along the road.'

Brodrick stared up at the shapes of Jaime and Sooty, Jaime with his head down and face in shadow. 'His clothes don't look local. Why are you with him? You never travel with others.'

'Turns out I knew him years ago... he's from a town on my route. I'm just dropping him off, as a favour for an old acquaintance.' _Please just keep going_, she thought.

'Hey, you!' Brodrick shouted at Jaime. 'Got a name?'

'Don't bother, he had his tongue removed by his captors,' the girl said. 'Poor fellow.'

'Come on Brod, we've still got hunting to do,' the poacher urged. Brodrick stared at Jaime a while longer, as if trying to place something, then unwillingly turned away. The girl waited until they'd disappeared around the corner, then whistled Sooty over and scrambled up onto her back. With a sharp tap of her heels, the horse and her two riders trotted briskly off into the woods, breaking into a gallop as soon as they were safely out of earshot of the men.

Finally when she thought she'd put enough distance between them, the girl slowed Sooty to a walk. They weaved between the trees, now almost in total darkness.

'Bit close for comfort, that,' Jaime said.

'Uh-huh. I was worried you might try and say something, or pretend you were a local. That's why I said the tongue thing.'

'I can fake a local accent just fine.'

'Yeah, I don't think so,' the girl scoffed. 'Your voice is way too upper-class.'

'I spent a lot of time around Lords, growing up,' Jaime explained a bit too defensively, she thought. 'Before I turned to crime. Obviously.'

'Obviously.' They continued on through the bush, steam rising from Sooty's coat as the night cooled. The horse was a little spooked from their gallop, and jogged nervously. The air in the girl's lungs felt cold.

'I'm enjoying sitting behind you on this horse,' Jaime said. 'The motion is very pleasant.'

'Nice change of topic,' she said.

'We could talk about my background if you really want,' he said, unconcerned, 'It's not that interesting. Or we could talk about how I like touching you. By touching you I mean, of course, fucking you.' His tone when he said such blunt things was so unapologetic, she had to giggle. She dug him in the stomach with her elbow.

'Shhh,' she chided. 'I'm trying to find us a place to sleep. Stop distracting me.'

'And will you be... sleeping in my blankets tonight? Or not? I don't think I can stand the suspense.'

She ignored him, save for an exhalation of breath through her nose.

'Come on.' Jaime wheedled. 'Give me _something_.'

'You have another girl, who's important to you, back home. Am I right? And I don't really need complications,' she said finally.

'That's not really answering me.'

'You're so annoying. I'm regretting ever... _fucking_ you.' She couldn't help smiling as she said it.

Jaime groaned melodramatically behind her. 'Was I that bad? I promise I can do better.'

Sooty shied sideways and nearly unseated him. He had to grab at the girl's jacket, and almost pulled her off with him.

'Fuck this horse,' he grumbled.

The girl started giggling again despite herself.

'On second thoughts, that's probably a bad idea,' Jaime clarified. 'While your horse does have a certain savage charm... alas I rather think she hates me.'

'Awww, poor Jaime. All the girls hate you.' The girl put on an exaggerated sad voice.

'I don't think this one really hates me. Or else she wouldn't be flirting with me so much.'

'Me, flirting with you?'

'Yep. It's so obvious. Embarrassing really.'

'Oh, you're so full of shit.' She reined Sooty in and jumped off. Jaime slid down after her. She strode determinedly around to the other side of her horse and started unpacking. Jaime caught up with her, ducking under Sooty's neck. She turned to walk away with an armful of camp supplies, and he fell in step next to her.

'Are you right?' she asked tartly. He stepped his leg across hers. Even in the dim light she could have avoided it, but she deliberately allowed her leg to hit up against his. 'Hey, stop tripping me, girl,' Jaime said softly. 'You know I'm chained up. We could fall over.' He used to arm to steady her.

He smelled of smoke and dirt and sweat. She could breathe his scent in forever. Against all her best intentions, and even without the effects of any alcohol to blame, she could feel herself sliding back into some place crazy, some place intoxicating. some place where rational thought did not exist.

'What about your other girl?' she said, clinging to a last piece of sanity.

'I'm not thinking of her right now,' Jaime whispered.

They were standing so close, legs between each other's legs, the warm vapour from their words drifting around them; she felt dazed. The darkness around them and Jaime's body heat made her unsettled. Disturbed. She wanted something, more than last night. She wanted it so badly she was shaking.

'I can't do this,' she blurted, and broke away. He didn't try to stop her, maybe he was too surprised. She walked off, quickly putting a safe distance between them. Her head reeled with half-formed thoughts, none of them helpful. _Oh fuck, oh fuck, but what was she going to do about him?_


	7. Bridge

The next day dawned clear again, windless. She hadn't slept very well, and the imminent heat and non-existent river-crossing made her irritable. She got up before the sun rose, took her fishing staff from the pack and headed down to the river. She unwound the line and cast it out into the pockets of still water under the rock shelves, as her father had once shown her, but nothing was biting except mosquitoes.

She walked back up to camp, dispirited and hungry. The one lump of bread they had left was too hard to bite into. Jaime got up, his eye looking noticeably purple, and they sat by the dead fire, drinking tea and chewing mint. The girl took off her jacket and long-sleeved outer top and tied them around her waist, but even with only a loose shirt on she felt lethargic. Even worse, despite the glow of sunburn on his face and his stitches crusting over, Jaime seemed more determined than ever to aggravate her. As they walked along the winding track, he talked almost constantly.

'Are you _sure_ this is the right direction?'

'See this river? There's only one direction.'

'We don't seem to be getting anywhere.'

'We are. It's just taking a little longer than I planned.'

'I think I'm delirious from hunger.' He grinned. 'Or sexual frustration. Both, probably.'

'Seven fucking hells. Have you never heard the saying 'Silence is a virtue?''

'Hmm, that _does _sound familiar. Although like most virtues, it's overvalued. Funny thing is, lately I seem to be surrounded by strong silent types.'

'Maybe the gods are trying to tell you something,' the girl muttered.

'I'd listen to the gods more if their advocacy was actually useful. Like, where do we cross this river? Send an enquiry, could you.'

'Look, I'm fairly sure we missed the river crossing when we took off last night. You want to turn around, go back? Run into the poacher and his band of rogues again? Because we can do that, if you want. I'll even cut your tongue out so they don't get suspicious.' She smiled with malice. 'Trust me, I'll enjoy doing it.'

'You were much better company yesterday,' Jaime remarked.

'_Shhh_.' The girl swung about and put a hand up to stop him. 'I mean, actually shhh.' She listened. Treading lightly, she padded down to the edge of the river and peered in. The plop and splash she'd heard was what she'd hoped. Turning around without moving her feet, she mouthed 'Fish' at Jaime, then held her hands apart to indicate a good size. He gave her an encouraging thumbs up.

The girl lowered herself onto her stomach and slid cautiously forward, until her arms were free of the overhang and could move above the water. Just below her, drifting back and forth in the eddying currents, a large fish rested. Its scales were silver and pink, and its mouth opened and closed, releasing small bubbles that floated to the surface and hung there like fat beads.

The girl let the weight of her left arm slide off the bank and down towards the water. The fish turned its eye back to her, but didn't react. Smoothly, slowly, the girl's hand dipped into the water. Curled under the fish's belly. Time froze and she centred herself; her eyes and mind and body were one. The only things that existed were her hand, the water, and a silvery fish. The fish flipped its tail. The girl's arm straightened in a flash and she caught the fish, tossing it up into the air. With her right hand she batted it onto the bank where it landed with a wet splat and flapped in the dirt. Jaime grabbed a stick and stabbed it behind the gills, skewering it into the ground.

'Well done,' he said.

'It's easy. We grew up on this river, as kids. We used to tickle trout all the time. My brother was better at it than I was.' She beamed. Jaime's approval pleased her. _Why does he have that effect on me? _'Let's keep going a while longer, we'll cook it for lunch.' She carried the stick with fish attached up to Sooty, opened her pack and using the edge of the pot, slid the still twitching fish off the stick and in. She replaced the lid.

'You've got decent reflexes, girl. You should carry the bow with you,' Jaime suggested, 'I saw a rabbit before. We could have a feast.'

She decided to take his advice and removed the bow from where it hung on the side of Sooty's saddle, along with three arrows. As she slid the arrows into her belt, she became aware that the entire front of her top was soaked from lying on the muddy bank, making the material cling revealing to her chest. She looked up and saw by Jaime's expression that she wasn't the only one aware of it.

She held his gaze, daring him to say something. There was a long pause, then he let out an exaggerated puff of air.

'Damn, but it's hot today.'

'I've cooled off,' she replied, smiling. She pulled the clinging top away from her skin, shook it a little in a futile effort to dry it out. The wet mud and Jaime's attention had given her goosebumps all over. Jaime was actually quiet for a while, and she found herself missing his talking. _I have no idea what I want,_ she thought. _Help_._  
_

They walked for a while longer, staying as much as possible under the shade of the trees. They didn't see anything rabbit-like, or anything else living at all, except the insects that buzzed constantly over their heads. The bush wilted in the heat. Finally around a bend a bridge came into sight, and they stopped. The narrow track they were on crossed over the wider bridge-road, the packed gravel surface worn smooth by the wheels of passing wagons.

'I thought we'd agreed, no bridges.' Jaime objected. As she knew he would.

'It's this, or swimming. And before you answer that, I know at least five people who have drowned in this channel in the last few months.'

'I don't have a great recent history with bridges.'

'This one is not that frequented. At night, virtually deserted. We'll have to wait around for the rest of the day to be really safe, but once it gets dark hardly anyone comes past here. I mean, a few brigands and outlaws but... nothing too hazardous.' The girl started leading Sooty to a thicket of bushes some distance from the road, onto higher ground. From there they could see the flat ribbon of roadway curving away beneath them, straightening over the river, and then continuing on downstream. No-one else was around. Jaime looked unconvinced.

'The last time I made the decision to cross a bridge my companion was captured at sword-point. I dove into the water and barely escaped with my life.'

The girl frowned. 'Was your companion a fugitive also?'

'I thought we agreed, no personal questions.'

'Hey, your story,' she pointed out.

'I was merely explaining my luck with bridges. Do you know how hard it is to swim in handcuffs?'

'Let me guess. Not as easy as it sounds?'

'We should reconsider this idea,' he frowned. 'Ride back the way we've come, find that place you know where we can wade across.'

'Like fuck we will. That's hours back. Forget that. RedHollow too, we've gone too far past now.'

'Then how are we to get these off?' Jaime shoved his shackles toward her, a rare flash of raw emotion on his face. 'Wasn't that the whole point of crossing the damned river?'

She stepped away, annoyed. 'Calm yourself. Yes, ideally, we would have gone into the Hollow. That was the plan. But things don't always work out how you planned them, do they? We have to cross the river anyway, to get to KingsLanding. Might as well cross here as anywhere. We're not far from the King's Road, I can get some steel for your cuffs at... at the Inn there. If I have to.'

Jaime slumped down on the ground. It was cooler in the leafy bush than on the river bank. Dappled shade patterned their skin. He sighed. 'Can we at least light a fire, cook that fish?'

'Alright. We'll keep an eye out for travellers.'

Across the dark water, tiny figures could be seen making their way along the road, in the direction of the main thoroughfare to the Capital. They streamed in from the adjoining lanes and arteries that led off its length. The girl considered uneasily how much harder it was going to be keeping inconspicuous from here on. The countryside was getting too populated.

Together, her and Jaime gathered a small stack of twigs, lit them, just enough to burn the trout's skin black. Then they put out the fire and ate the flaky pale flesh with their fingers. The day continued to warm up, and they sat on the hill in the cover of trees and watched the far traffic. She kept her bow slung on her shoulder. No rabbits came by. No-one used the bridge. A distant horse and cart trudged up a laneway on the other bank, shimmering in the heat, and a short time later four soldiers strode along the same lane, turning towards the King's Road and not in the direction of the bridge. The girl and Jaime sat side by side, watching the men's tiny forms marching like grey and blue ants until they were out of sight.

'North soldiers.' Jaime said.

'The Young Wolf.' she mused. 'King in The North.'

'The all-conquering Robb Stark.'

'Is that his name? Robb. Huh.'

Jaime turned to stare at her. 'Do you really not know his name?'

'I know his name,' the girl said defensively. 'The Young Wolf. Like I said.'

'But his _name. _Robb Stark.'

'I know his name is Stark, fool. I may not spend as much time as you hanging around _Lords_,' she snipped, 'but I do know the Houses and... such. I don't need to know his name's Robb to know who he is.'

Jaime shook his head. 'Just how ignorant can one be?' he said under his breath, the disdain evident.

'Oh spare me,' the girl huffed. 'Just because I'm not obsessed with the finer points of the elite.' From Jaime, the criticism stung. She felt judged, provincial. 'I live on the road, alright? With my horse. I do a job, I deliver shit, and the people I deliver to don't give a fuck about what all that lot in their _castles_ are doing. My sister and her kids live in a small cottage in the hills outside Goldgrass. When I'm home, we don't spend much time discussing all the _Lord's and Ladies' _names.'

'Fine,' Jaime said, holding his hands up in a sorry-I-spoke gesture. But she wasn't finished.

'Do you even know how many Robbs I've met? Robb the tanner, Robb the merchant, Robb the fucking village half-wit. Wasn't the last King named Robb? It's only _the_ most common name in these parts. I don't need to know the Stark boy shares the name Robb, alright? He's the Young Wolf, King in the North, to me.' She listed more examples, tapping her fingers as she counted them off. 'The Boy King, the Queen Regent, The Imp, The Kingslayer... That's what we call them where I come from. We don't need to know anything else.'

Jaime said nothing. The girl waited a while, angry, picking up acorns and tossing them into the shrubbery. The leaves stirred, but there was little breeze and the air felt muggy. When Jaime still didn't talk, she looked over at him, contrite. 'Sorry I... I get a bit touchy. I've always been a prickly bitch. Thank you for telling me. Now I know, his name is Robb.'

Jaime remained quiet. He wasn't even looking at her, he seemed lost in thoughts of somewhere else, someone else. His face was set, the lines around his eyes harsh. Dirt so ingrained it stained his pores. He looked, above all, tired. Tired of her, of his handcuffs, of travelling. Of everything.

'Robb is such a common name,' the girl carried on, regretting her earlier snark. 'Maybe you should have used it as your alias. Instead of Jaime, I mean.'

He did glance at her then, sharply, an unreadable expression on his face.

'Take it as a tip from me, for next time you're on the run.' She smiled, willing him to smile back at her. She didn't like this version of Jaime, distant and unreachable. She wanted the fun one back. After what seemed like a long time, a ghost of a smile appeared. He still looked tired.

Suddenly he stood up, stretching his bound hands above his head, rolling the kinks out of his shoulders. He started walking down towards the river. 'Thanks for the tip,' he said as he left, 'but I kind of think I look like a Jaime.'

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The girl skipped to catch up with him, Sooty following behind her. She was startled by a rustling in the bushes, and she slid the bow down off her shoulder. A shape moved in the periphery of her vision, but when she turned her head she saw nothing.

'Something's there,' Jaime said.

'Yeah, but it's gone now.' She shrugged the bow back up her arm. 'It's too hot, let's get a drink.'

They went down the bank to re-fill the water flask, and took turns drinking from it. Sooty balanced with her front hooves in the mud, back hooves on the bank, her muzzle submerged in the water up to her nostrils. With each swallow, her ears twitched. A cloud of tiny insects swarmed around their heads. The girl's eyes itched and behind them a dull but persistent pain throbbed in her skull. After a minute's hesitation - _fuck it_ - she untied her jacket from around her waist, dunked it in the river and lifted it high over her head. Cold water streamed onto her hot skin. She re-soaked it, tossed it to Jaime and he wiped his face and neck with it. His eyes took in the lines of water running down her neck into her thin top, droplets trickling around the contours of her breasts.

'You should take that top off,' he said, the old teasing back in his voice.

'Is that what you think.'

'It is a long time until night,' he said, a glint in his eye. 'We could get very bored.'

A scuffling sound again caught their attention. The girl's eyes scanned the trees and bushes along the bank.

'Down river,' Jaime whispered, and she turned and looked where he was indicating. A black goat with a white belly was standing on a pebbly verge, drinking. It had short sharp horns and a white stripe along its jaw. Behind it, a smaller goat stood in the trees, its tail flicking.

The girl brought the bow to her side and eased an arrow out of her belt. She notched it in the string without looking down, her eyes glued to the goats. Then she raised the bow up and took aim.

As if sensing their impending death, both goats spun and darted off into the trees, their pointy hooves kicking up a spray of wet pebbles. One of them stumbled before leaping away; the girl's arrow lodged quivering in its shoulder.

She ran along the bank, jumping from rocks and down into the shallows, but when she reached the spot where the goat had been drinking there was only a couple of drops of blood shining on the grey stones. _Damn._ She looked up the path they'd taken as they fled, then ran back to where Sooty and Jaime waited.

'Missed it,' Jamie stated the obvious.

'No,' she said, 'I got it. The big one. It just.. didn't die.'

'It didn't die, because you didn't hit it anywhere that actually counts. That's called a miss.' Jaime said. 'C'mon, let's go back up before someone comes along and sees us.' They trooped back up the hill, their clothes drying as they went. 'We should ride after it,' the girl said half-heartedly, frustrated at her off shot.

'What would be the point, its long gone now,' Jaime said.

They sat back down on the ridge, stared out onto the road. After a few minutes, they heard the sound of hooves and watched as a coach slowly rumbled past beneath them and made its way across the bridge. For the next few hours, a steady trickle of wayfarers passed by. A couple of children, aged around seven or eight, ran along the far bank of the river, occasionally throwing things into the water. The soft sound of their chatter and squeals drifted over on the breeze.

'They remind me of my sister's kids,' the girl said, watching them. She was lying on her stomach on the soft leaves and mulch, resting her chin in her hands. 'Two girls, that's what she has.' She turned to Jaime, who was stretched out on his back nearby, his head propped on one of their packs, elbow bent over his face to block the sun. 'Got any kids?' she asked.

Jaime's voice was muffled beneath his arm. 'I think that counts as a personal question.'

'Oh, get over your issues.'

'I do have kids, actually,' he said, yawning. 'Three.'

'Do you miss them?'

'I never had much to do with them. I was away a lot, when they were growing up.'

'I know, I feel like that with my nieces. That I'm missing them growing up, y'know?' The girl watched the two distant children vanish on up the road. 'Every time I go back they've gotten so big. They're wonderful, though. When they're not your own, they're even better.' She turned on her side towards Jaime. 'Have you got nieces or nephews?'

He hesitated. 'What?' he said, rubbing his eyes.

'Nieces. Nephews. Those things your brother or sister has running around.' She stared at him and he stared blankly back, as if she had started speaking a foreign language. She clicked her fingers in front of his eyes. 'Hello? Anyone home?'

'My sister has them, yes,' he said, slowly. She wondered if he had heat-stroke.

'Oh. Do you see them, much?'

'No.' He sat up, yawned again. 'I'm not much of a kid person.'

'You seem like you would be.'

'Appearances can be deceptive,' he grinned, suddenly playful again. His mercurial moods were giving her vertigo. 'You, for instance. Sitting there with your fair hair and your big eyes, like an innocent maiden.' She looked startled, and he reached over his cuffed hands and pinched a lock of her hair between his fingers. 'Strawberry blonde. I was always a fool for blondes,' he continued in a low voice, running the smooth strand through his palm.

'I... uh. I always think it's more, uh... red,' she stuttered. The look on his face was so dreamy he almost looked to be in a trance.

'Red-tinged, perhaps. Red hair must be in your family somewhere. But _you _my dear girl, are most definitely blonde.'

The girl swallowed. In the far recesses of her mind, a warning pinged; the way he had switched from one mood to another with no apparent reason, his weirdness around some subjects. He didn't want her to pry into his background and that was fine, everyone was a liar. Even so, something else wasn't quite right. But as he leaned in to kiss her, the warning grew so faint she couldn't even hear it any more. Well, she could. But,_ fuck warnings._


	8. Wolf

Jaime's mouth pressed against her's, his tongue hard on her tongue. The taste of him was what she imagined heat must taste like: spicy, sweet, salty, addictive. The wet warmth of the kiss reached all the way down into her belly, spreading a blissful sedative that seeped into all her limbs and paralysed them. Around her, the leaves trembled and the insect life hummed; on the road carts rolled by and children yelled, but the girl had no awareness of any of it. Only Jaime's mouth. The taste of him.

Jaime's hands came up between them and she felt the metal of the cuffs digging into her chest. 'Fucking _hells,' _ Jaime swore softly, as he broke their kiss. His breath in her face was delicious. She was intoxicated by it. She leaned forward but he pushed her back. Shifted himself around until he was kneeling beside her. Then he raised his hands and looped them over her head.

The girl knelt up too, as he drew her in towards him. His bound wrists slid down the curve of her spine, his fingers splayed out to hold her steady. She kissed him lightly, he groaned and bit at her neck. 'If I had these cuffs off, you know what I would do?' he muttered. She hoped he wasn't expecting an answer. She didn't feel capable of talking right now. The part of her brain that dealt in coherent speech had completely checked out. So she could only make a small grunting noise as he straightened up, grabbed her hips as far as the restraint on his hands allowed and turned her around so that she faced away from him. His arms tightened to hold her there, and his mouth nipped at her neck.

'I'd fuck you like this,' he said. His hands dropped to her pelvis and he pulled her forcibly towards him, her bottom hitting against his crotch. 'I like it this way. Do you?' He nuzzled her collar bones, bit her skin again. When she didn't answer, just moaned quietly in her throat, he added 'I think you'd like it.'

The girl almost couldn't breath fast enough, her pulse hammered and she felt weak yet electrified at the same time. She reached behind her to pull down her clothing, frantic to feel his skin against hers, his hard flesh pushing into her, filling her up. A sharp sound registered in her dulled brain, but she ignored it. Her fingers fumbled on the waistband of her pants. _ Fucking clothes, how difficult were they to get off in a hurry? _ The sound came again, a horse's snort, and the ground under the girl's knees vibrated a little with heavy hoof thuds. She paused, the fog in her mind lifting. Sooty? Was that _Sooty? _She put her hands on the top of Jaime's forearms as they wrapped around her waist, gripped them. It was like being enclosed by iron bands.

'Stop,' she panted urgently. 'Stop for a... for a second.'

Reluctantly, she thought, Jaime relaxed his hold and raised his head from her neck. They listened. A horse's snort sounded again, in the direction of the trees where Sooty had wandered off to graze. The stamping sound of nervous hooves, and along with that something even more sinister: a strange, low, hissing grumble, a deep, broken rasp. It was loud enough to make the hairs on her arm stand up. Like the malevolent chuckle of a demon. The girl had never seen a demon, or believed in one. But if she did, that's exactly what it would sound like.

'What in gods name...?' Jaime said, and the girl felt him freeze behind her. She herself turned cold with fear. She'd lived nearly her whole life in these parts, and had not once heard a sound like that before.

Slowly, she lifted Jaime's arms and ducked under them, easing herself to her feet as silently as she could. Standing up made her momentarily dizzy. The air on her flushed cheeks was still warm, the trees thick all around her, languidly rustling their leaves. She stared into the darkness of their dense foliage. Beyond a few yards into the bush, everything was just shifting shapes and shadow patterns.

'What was that.. growling?' Jaime asked, also getting to his feet. His voice was still husky with recent lust. He cleared his throat. 'I'm going to take a stab in the dark here and say it wasn't your horse.'

'Sooty's in there, though.'

'Maybe we should... Jaime glanced down at the bridge. 'Relocate ourselves. Post haste.'

'Not without Sooty.' She took a breath.

Jaime knocked one arm into her shoulder with some force. 'Don't fucking whistle for it, girl! Are you mad?'

She glared at him, stepped away and grabbed her bow from the ground. 'Fine. I won't whistle.' She notched one of the two arrows she had in her quiver, lifted the curved weapon and got a good grip on the feathered end of the arrow. She headed towards the trees. 'Are you coming?' she whispered back, harshly.

'You are wholly, irreparably deranged,' Jaime said. 'To think this a good idea. And you are seriously going to need more than two fucking arrows.'

They crept through the bush, placing their steps cautiously, trying not to break twigs or scuff dried leaves. The ground underfoot was spongy and thick with mulch. A ticking of beetles and occasional fluttering of a bird somewhere overhead were the only sounds. The girl controlled her breath; in, out, calm, steady. The fear had left her, replaced with a cold determination. When she felt this way, nothing could sway her. This is how a good hunter must be, she knew. Totally focused, totally ruthless.

In a ditch up ahead, hidden by a tangle of blackberry branches, she could see something moving. She stopped mid stride, sank lower to the ground. Jaime beside her did the same. He had a broken stump of dead wood in his hands. It was riddled with ant holes and looked as if it might crumble to sawdust at any moment. But Jaime's face was as determined as hers, he didn't look trepid or unsure. He looked excited, alive with the thrill of the hunt. And curious.

The growling noise came over them again, jagged and threatening and very close by. Also a fetid smell with it. Rotten meat and piss. A musky wild animal smell. Was it a bear? The girl had heard bears before, they didn't sound like this. A big cat? _How big did they get, anyway? _She jabbed her finger at the spot behind the screen of blackberries, to indicate what they both already knew; that's where it was. Whatever _it_ was.

Jaime rose up from his squatting position and craned his head to see over the hedge. Took a couple of steps forward. Froze again. The girl waited for a moment, and when it didn't appear as though Jaime was destined to be immediately torn limb from limb, she carefully followed his lead. Her bow was held out straight in front of her, the string tightly drawn back. Peering over the spiky twigs and berries, she could see a shape crouching in the shady thicket in front of them, not more than five yards away.

Her first thought was Sooty, because of the size, but then she came to her senses and realised horses don't crouch. It had its head down and there was a crunching, grinding sound like granite being smashed with a roller. Another spine-tingling growl, snarling up from the depths of its being. 'Holy mother of seven gods,' Jaime whispered in awe. 'Have you ever seen a wolf that big before?'

'It's eating my goat,' she noted. They were mouthing the words at each other, basically lip-reading.

'I think it is _ITS_ goat, now.'

'Where's Sooty?'

'I don't fucking know, or care.' Jaime's mouth exaggerated each silently enunciated word. 'Let's go.'

They began to back away. Everything was in high intensity focus to the girl. The pad of their footfalls, the foul smell of the wolf, the streak of sunlight shining along the smooth shaft of her arrow that stuck out of the goat's body as it was lifted up in the wolf's jaws. _It must have seen us, smelled us. Lucky it's eating. We might live another day yet, _she thought. They backed up for what seemed like eternity, placing each step behind themselves so gently on the ground that sticks bent and didn't break under them. Finally they were far enough distance away that Jaime indicated they turn around. They took off running smoothly out of the thick bush and back into the relative clearing of the spot they'd been using as a rest stop.

'Not even Robb Stark's wolf is that size,' Jaime puffed. 'I think our waiting-around-til-night-fall plan has been somewhat compromised.' He picked up the pack on the ground that he'd rested his head on. The remainder of their gear had been strapped to Sooty. 'Come on,' he turned to the girl, where she stood in the clearing. Seeing her face, he rolled his eyes. 'Oh, don't even.'

'Sooty is my horse, she's saved my life before. A lot of times, actually. She was here just now, we heard her. We need to find her!'

'The horse is not stupid, she's seen the size of that wolf and run for it. I'm with her.'

'Think for just a... Jaime, please,' the girl begged. 'It's too early, there's still too much traffic. And Sooty'll come back, I know she will.'

'You don't know anything,' he said, and his eyes looked sad, but hard. 'Nothing.'

She felt herself anger again. 'What is with your _reckless _bullshit? Patience is a virtue, fool!'

'Oh!' Jaime mocked, pulling a sorry-what-was-I-thinking face. 'Is that up there with silence? Because I have sat alone in a cage, chained to a stake, for seven months; I think I've practised the virtues of _patience _and _silence _long enough to make me a damn saint. So, my dear girl,' he adjusted the pack on his shoulder, 'You can stay here and commit suicide waiting for your beloved horse to your heart's content. I have a life to get on with.' He turned and with suprising agility for someone with his hands in chains, ran off lightly down the slope, angling towards the road that led onto the bridge. His boots skidded a little as he negotiated the steep gradient. Within seconds the top of his head was gone from view down the ridge.

_Fuck off then! _the girl thought bitterly. A pain stabbed in her ribcage. Her chest felt tight. _Taking my pack too, what little is in there. You won't get far in daylight, with any luck someone will pick you up and return you to the cage where you belong. You treacherous, blackguarded, fucking arse. _She looked back into the trees, half-expecting a monster wolf to prowl forth and rip her to shreds. She'd almost welcome it as an improvement to her day. But all was still. Sooty was nowhere to be seen or heard, either.

She dithered, holding the bow loosely, then took the arrow from it and stuck it back in her belt. She walked further up the hill, searching the ground for hoof prints. Her heart pounded from running and heightened emotion, she couldn't focus. She didn't dare whistle, not so close to that creature in the forest. As she tried to gather her whirling thoughts into some sense of order, the sound of hoofbeats came from the road below and she looked over hopefully.

But it wasn't Sooty. Three men in dirty black coats, hoods pulled low over their faces, were riding towards the bridge. She recognised them immediately as outlaws. And not the good kind, the bend-the-rules but still have basic humanity, kind. These men were brutal miscreants who would disembowel a child for a loaf of bread and not even be hungry. She'd crossed paths with them before, and survived to tell the tale, mainly thanks to Sooty. But now Sooty was gone, she was losing her mind, and the one who was going to find himself right dead in the path of these particular felons was Jaime.

'Fuck,' the girl cursed, out loud. 'Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_!' She took out the arrow again, set it in the bow, and ran down the hill to the bridge.


	9. Outlaws

It was slipperier than she expected getting down the gradient from the forest to the road. She was moving too fast and her heels slid out from under her. She went down the slope on her behind, jumping off at the end. It was a heavy landing and she pitched forward onto her hands, the pebbly surface skinning both palms. _Ouch._

As she scrambled to her feet, she was aware her stealthy entrance had not gone unnoticed. About fifty yards down the road, the trio of horsemen stopped, swinging their mounts around as one.

It was almost dusk; the light beginning to fade out into the edges of the sky and all around the countryside turning grey. The time of day that crept up on you unnoticed, until you looked at something a distance away and realised it was unclear. The girl watched as the outlaws turned to face her, but she couldn't pick out their faces or eyes. They were just a black mass of horse legs and cloaks, like a mythical multi-headed creature. Without Sooty, the girl felt very alone, and small.

Glancing further beyond the men, she could see a figure with head bowed, shuffling closer to the bridge. Jaime had evidently thought he couldn't outrun three horsemen and had chosen to look harmless instead. He didn't know these outlaws targeted harmless. _He's alone too_, the girl reminded herself. She dusted her sore palms on her top, shifted the bow back up her shoulder.

_Here goes nothing, _she thought, taking a deep breath.

She started walking towards the men, her boots crunching on the gravel. They stood and waited for her in the dimming light. One of them turned to look back at Jaime, as if undecided which one of these lone travellers was easier pickings. He reined his mount around and separated from his fellow outlaws, obviously figuring that they could have both.

'Hey!' the girl called out, to distract him.

The man who had turned around paused, but another outlaw, with a long black beard pointing like a dagger from under his hood, motioned him to continue. 'Hold that one for me,' the bearded man instructed, and the instructee kicked his horse forward and rode up to the retreating Jaime.

The other two outlaws, the bearded one who sat higher on a taller horse and a smaller man, rode on toward the girl. The clop-clop of their horse's hooves sounded like the slow beat of warning drums. The girl could see that the man who'd ridden after Jaime had easily caught up to him. Jaime didn't even try to run off, just hunched over to make himself inconspicuous. _If only he knew how futile that was, _the girl thought.

'Well _hello _there, beautiful,' the bearded man said, as he neared. His voice was soft and high, but more menacing for it. He rested his crossed arms on the pommel of his saddle and leaned forward to leer at her. She supposed he was attempting a smile. She gave him one of her own.

'Hello Draw,' she greeted him. Looked over at the smaller man, nodded. 'Guts.' Guts was a teenager, with a long thin face and a vacant look. The only time the girl had seen any sign of life on it was when he was disembowelling a villager who'd bought the last bag of salt ahead of him at a market. His eyes had shone then with pure joy.

'You remembered our... hey, she remembered our names!' Draw said in mock-delight, turning to look at Guts. Guts didn't change expression. He sucked spit through his teeth, and it made a squeaking sound.

Draw nudged his horse right on up to the girl, so that his stirrup was level with her shoulder. A massive curved scythe hung from his hip and nearly brushed against the girl's cheek. It was so polished and lathed she could see her reflection in its surface. She didn't back away. She could hear no-one else coming down the road, it was late in the day and people everywhere were finished their business and gone home, or settling into their camps. Good people, anyway. The lawless and the ne-er-do-wells, of course, were just waking up.

She looked down the road and saw with dismay that the third man had dismounted and was holding some kind of weapon at Jaime's neck. They were too far away for her to see what it was, or whether Jaime's face was showing his regret that he hadn't run like fuck while he still had half a chance.

'Fancy seeing you here,' the girl looked up at Draw, looming over her on his destrier. Sooty would barely reach to this horse's withers. 'It's been a while.'

'Too long,' said Draw in his pleasant voice, for all the world as if their last encounter had not involved attempted rape and mass violence.

'New horse?' she asked, politely.

'The last one was too traumatised by your mare, Delivery Girl,' Draw snickered quietly. 'He weren't ever quite the same after that nag of yours kicked 'im in the head and trampled 'im. I notice though,' he looked around in an exaggerated fashion,' that you appear to be less one killer horse this evening.' The smile he beamed down at her was terrifying.

'She's around,' the girl said. She marvelled at how calm her voice sounded. 'Aren't you also less some companions? I'm sure I remember more of you.'

'How kind to notice. Well, Will was sent to the Wall some time back. You remember, Guts's brother? Deserted, and got his head lopped off by Lord Stark hisself. Went mad too, I hear. Saying all sorts of rubbish. Sanity don't run in that family, do it, Guts?' Draw glanced over to his silent partner. Guts stared back at him with the intelligence of a dead fish.

'Shame,' the girl said. 'Will was the only one of you I liked'

Draw laughed heartily. 'Ahh... Delivery Girl.' He drew his sabre from his hip so swiftly that she didn't see the motion, just felt the cold sharp tip of it dimpling the skin under her chin. He applied a little pressure to tip her head back, so he could meet her eyes. 'You just never got the chance to know us better.'

The girl couldn't answer. Moving her jaw would result in the blade piercing her throat. The outlaw inclined his head slightly, and she obediently dropped the bow from her shoulder. It clinked onto the road.

'Bale! Bring that one up here!' Draw called out to his third companion, and the girl saw out of the corner of her eye Jaime being brought up to join them. She didn't dare move her head to look at him. 'Well, well, ain't this cosy?' Draw said. He was positively glowing with elation. 'Let's start by turning out all your pockets and you, pretty boy,' he turned to Jaime, who still had his head down, 'empty that pack.'

Jaime dropped the pack on the ground and knelt to try and open the straps.

'Handcuffs, huh?' There was a silence, where the girl could see something getting put together in Draw's mind. 'Hey Bale. What was we hearing just the other day?'

Bale, a large man with no front teeth, grinned slowly as recognition dawned.

'Guts, remember that kid down in RedHollow, the one said all the North soldiers was there yesterday? Remember who he says they was_ ever so keen _to find?'

Guts stared at Draw and smiled, too. The smile reminded the girl of the vacuum created when catfish open their mouths and suck in all life in the immediate vicinity.

The girl swallowed. The sharp metal dented into her flesh. She licked her lips.

'Oh, we has hit the fucking jackpot with this one, lads,' Draw chuckled.

The girl whistled, as loud and long as she could. The sound hung in the still evening air, clear as a church bell.

At the same time, Jaime swung his hands up and knocked Bale's pick-axe out of his hands. Draw spun his horse around and aimed his massive scythe into the centre of Jaime's chest. He was so quick, Jaime didn't have time to react, let alone pick up Bale's axe from the ground. Draw's blade pressed into his shirt. A patch of blood bloomed from the scythe's touch, soaking the material, and Jaime stumbled backwards into the ditch.

The girl whistled again.

'Shut that whore up!' Draw shouted, and Guts jumped off his horse, took two lanky steps and held a serrated fishing knife in the girl's face. She stared into his deserted eyes with all the bravado she could muster. Up this close, she noticed the teeth of the knife had bits of dried flesh stuck to them.

'Now now, Jaime, don't over-excite yourself, I wouldn't want to kill you,' Draw said, dismounting and striding to the fallen Jaime with lithe ease. 'Besides, the party's just starting. We have to fuck your friend first.'

He just had time to haul Jaime up out of the ditch when a putrid stench washed over the group. Rotten meat and musk and urine. The horses pranced and shied, tossing their heads, their breath puffing out white clouds in the darkening air. Draw looked uncertain, his hand fisted in Jaime's tunic, unwilling to let go. Bale wrinkled his nose at the smell and tried to get the panicked horses under control. They dragged him backwards but he held onto their reins grimly. Guts kept his eyes on the girl, angling his narrow knife along her cheek.

Along with the smell came a padding noise, the quiet click of claws. Then Bale gave a short surprised yelp, and something splattered wetly on the ground. The horses, freed, galloped madly on up the road, their hoof beats rattling on the stones.

The girl held her nerve and Guts' gaze, although her bowels cramped with fear. Guts refused to break eye contact first. Behind him, a shadow grew, grey and black and blending in with the night. Draw yelled something, but Guts didn't have a chance to take his partner's no doubt very useful advice. The teenager's head was ripped clean off his skinny body, and the girl was suddenly drenched in blood.

She sat down, hard. 'Just keep still,' she hissed to Jaime. 'Just don't move.'

Draw appeared stunned at this unexpected turn of events, but only momentarily. He leapt away from Jaime and sprang towards the wolf, who was shaking Guts' head wildly and sending a red arc of blood across the road. Draw showed no fear as he plunged his blade towards the animal's neck, his face a portrait of determined courage, right up until the wolf dropped Guts' head and pounced. The outlaw fell back and was lost beneath the wolf's teeth and claws.

The girl blinked to clear her eyes of blood, rolled backwards into the ditch. She started crawling towards Jaime. He was already in a crouch moving away from her. She tried to breathe evenly, tried to move as quickly and quietly as she could. Thorns jabbed into her knees and sharp rocks cut her hands. Blood trickled into her eyes but she didn't stop to wipe it away.

They crawled for what seemed forever, the girl expecting at any moment to be lifted clear of the ditch in sharp jaws. Finally, Jaime turned and pulled himself up to the side, their path ending in a bank. The girl sat up and looked past him and saw the struts of the bridge rising overhead. The rush of the river was loud.

'Here, girl.' Jaime reached both hands down and pulled her up onto the road. They squatted there, looking back along where they'd come. The sun had gone completely and it was too dark now to see anything except a vague black shape lying far away on the road.

'Is it gone?' the girl whispered.

'I think so. Taken the bearded blackguard with it. It's a shame, we could've really used that blade of his.'

'You wanna go back and get it? It's fine, I'll wait here,' she replied, weakly.

'It's good you still have a sense of humour,' he quipped.

She staggered on numb legs with Jaime across the final stretch of road and onto the bridge, their footsteps ringing hollow on the planks. After crawling for so long, her knees didn't straighten properly. Her palms were on fire with every splinter and nettle embedded in them. She could feel the mask of blood on her face drying; when she blinked it cracked. Below her feet, the black water rushed past in dizzying motion, making the bridge seem to sway and lurch.

Jaime tapped her arm to stop, pointed. She looked up and saw a man stumbling along in front of them. He seemed to be dragging something. They hurried to catch up to him, and Jaime blocked his path. Bale, holding his axe in one hand and his guts in the other, took another few tottering steps. He wobbled but stayed stubbornly upright.

'How _did_ you make it this far? That's very impressive,' Jaime said.

Bale bared his toothless lips, pink froth in the corners of his mouth, but didn't seem quite capable of speech.

'I guess the wolf didn't want you. He must've been frightened off by that pick you have there. The one you told me you'd cave my head in with?' Jaime looked at the man expectantly. 'Forgotten so soon? Never mind. We're here for you now.' Jaime leaned over and took the pick-axe out of the man's grip. Bale's mouth foamed as it opened and closed, and thin ropes of spit fell to the bridge's planks. '_Kingsssslaaay...' _he spat wetly.

Jaime tossed the axe to the girl, and she caught it. Then he firmly guided Bale over towards the side of the bridge, keeping his body angled away so that he didn't brush up against the contents of Bale's stomach. At the piers, Bale made a last effort to wriggle away, but Jaime held him fast. The man grabbed at the struts and clung on. His intestines flopped onto the deck. Jaime looked at them with distaste, then crouched down, grabbed the man's ankles in both hands and hoisted him straight up. Bale flailed his arms as he tilted over the wall of the bridge and down, turning end over end, into the churning blackness.

The girl walked to Jaime's side, and together they peered after the outlaw's descent. She picked up the loops of his insides and flung them after him. The water swelled and charged on, heedless.

'You're not very squeamish, are you?' Jaime said.

'My father was a butcher. We used to have pig's heads in the bathtub most days.'

'Well. You have quite the talent for it.'

'Thanks,' she replied, wiping gunk from her face with a forearm. 'And you have quite the talent for pushing people off stuff.'

'I've had practise,' Jaime shrugged.


	10. Chains

Once across the bridge, they immediately headed down the steep embankment that dropped to the river. Jaime insisted on getting off the road, and the girl had to wash her face and hands. She knelt on the stony inlet and scrubbed at her skin, removed her bloody top and soaked it in the ice-cold water. Even after she'd wrung it out several times, it still stained maroon.

Jaime sat on a boulder under one of the bridge's support beams, resting his chin in his hands. He was, miraculously, still holding their one remaining backpack. 'So, what now?' he asked. It sounded more like a philosophical statement than an actual question requiring an answer, so the girl ignored him and kept rinsing her clothes and dunking her hair, in a futile effort to rid them of the remains of Guts.

'I don't know about you, but I'm starving,' Jaime commented.

'There's no food,' the girl said. She twisted her wet hair, picked at a glob on her top with her fingernail.

'Not here. But there's people around, there must be houses, Inns. Isn't the Crossroads nearby?' Jaime turned his head to look back up the bank, to where the road cornered right and ran along the river, downstream. 'That's the Riverroad, isn't it?'

'No, but it leads onto it,' the girl said.

'And then we're... how far from the Inn?'

'I'm not going to that Inn, alright?' she snapped.

'They'd have food there. Got any coins in this pack of yours?' Jaime began unstrapping it, rummaging through the contents. The girl marched up to him and snatched it out of his hands.

'I _do_ have some coins, and they're mine to spend _where_ and when I see fit. It's hours walk to the Crossroads, for your information. Only a short ride, but in case you haven't noticed, we're less one horse. And, I kind of need her.' The girl stared out across the river to where they'd been the day before, hoping to see some kind of movement in the trees that might, possibly, be Sooty. But there was nothing but blackness.

'Can't you steal another horse? I'd have thought a girl of your experience would have a knack for that.'

'I don't _need_ another horse!' she retorted. 'I need _my horse!' _There was a pain in her chest so real it was suddenly hard to breathe. It was worse than the pains in her hands or knees. She refused to face the likelihood that Sooty may be gone forever, shook her head to clear the thought from it. 'I've had her since she was a foal, and I was seven. I taught her everything she knows. She's the best horse in the... oh, whatever. Like _you'd_ understand.'

'Well, definitely better than the one who ran you into that tree branch and impaled you,' Jaime agreed. He pulled his tunic away from his body, wincing a little. 'But we need to deal with more immediate problems. I'm sure Sooty can look after herself for a while.'

The girl peered at Jaime. 'Are you hurt?'

'Not badly,' he grinned, but his forehead creased slightly.

'Let me...' the girl came over to him, pushed aside his hands and felt the cut in the tunic material on his chest, clean as if from shears. She pulled up the hem with a sinking dread and inhaled sharply when she saw the gash from Draw's scythe leaking dark red down Jaime's torso.

'It's nothing,' he muttered, trying to move her away. 'Let's just get out of here.'

She gently touched the raised edges of his wound, feeling the width apart of them, the warm wetness on her fingers. 'This needs to be stitched, it will fester.'

'Not in the next few hours it won't. Let's worry first about getting somewhere we're safe from every passing brigand who wants to cleave our heads in. And getting some food. Then you can inflict your maester's skills on me all you wish.' Jaime stood up, impatient. 'And we have this, remember?' He retrieved the pick-axe the girl had left on the bank while she was washing. 'We'll get these chains off, too.'

Reluctantly, the girl followed him up the escarpment. The pale strip of road angled away from the river, stretching into the distance and thankfully deserted at this time of night. Trees clustered in on both sides, their branches reaching across to entwine twiggy hands with each other. Somewhere a bird hooted, and night insects trilled beneath the ground. At least the flies had retired.

'What was it that outlaw said to you, on the bridge?' the girl asked.

'He didn't say anything.'

'He was trying to say something. Before you pushed him off. He was... saying a word.'

Jaime frowned as if seriously trying to remember. 'I think he may've said 'Kill me,' or similar.'

'But he grabbed hold of the side of the bridge when you tried to lift him over it... that doesn't make sense.' Something else was tickling at the back of the girl's mind, something from the conversation they'd had with the outlaws. She'd had no time to think on it then, but now it was nagging her. An itch she couldn't quite reach. _Something one of the men had said, but what had it been?_

Jaime looked bored. 'He was carrying his intestines in his hand. I don't think you can expect much sense from him.'

The pair started walking, staying in the forest's shadows but following the road. A gibbous moon hung low in the sky, like a yellow egg. Soon they came to a junction where their path met a highway. They stopped, well back from the verge. They were more likely to run into patrols or other travellers here.

'The Riverroad,' Jaime said. 'About six miles to the Inn, I'd guess.'

'There are bound to be folks about,' the girl said.

'Time to get these off, then,' Jaime said, passing her the pick-axe. 'If I'm not in chains then I'm of much less interest to the general public.'

They sat a little way from the road, under the cover of some bushes. The moon shone bright enough to see by, and the air was crisp. Sounds travelled further on clear nights, the girl knew, so she was concerned at the noise this was going to make, and who might hear it. To distract herself, she turned the axe's handle over and over in one hand, getting a feel for it. It was a light weapon, compact, the tapered end sharpened to a fine edge. She selected the blunt end to face down, and swung it a few times for practise.

Jaime sat on the grass and laid his cuffed hands out on a small log, his hands stretched as far apart as they could. 'Whenever you're ready,' he said, looking up at her.

'I haven't broken a chain apart before,' the girl warned.

'There's nothing to it. Just look at a place in the middle and hit it fucking hard.'

'This is more a stabbing sort of weapon, not a smashing one.'

'Are you going to fail before you've even tried, girl? Just hit the gods damn chain.'

The girl sighed, took a deep breath and hefted the axe above her head.

'I hope your aim with an axe is better than your aim with a bow,' Jaime said, cheerfully.

'You don't need hands, right?' she said, a hint of a smile.

'I have faith in you.'

She brought the pick-axe down with all her strength. It bounced off the chains with a resonant clang, almost hitting her in the face on the rebound.

Jaime let out a pained grunt at the shock of the blow to his wrists. He shook them, straightened them out on the log. 'Again.'

The girl raised the axe and swung a second time, and again the axe ricocheted off without breaking the chain. The echoing ring of it resounded through the trees, too loud for the girl's liking. Her palms burned from the recoil.

'Fuck,' Jaime said. He bit down on his lip. His fingers splayed at the agony the metal cuffs were inflicting on his wrists through the blow's force. '_Again.'_

'No, this thing is too light,' the girl argued. 'And people two villages away can hear this.'

'Use the pick end, not the mallet end. Cut the links, or prise them apart,' Jaime insisted.

The girl did as he bid, hacking with the pick, but the pointed edge just keep skipping off the chain's curved links rather than biting in. She tried to lever the links apart but the iron rings were unyielding. After she'd sliced her hands twice, she threw the axe down, the handle slippery with her blood. 'This is useless. We need something heavier.'

Jaime looked seriously pissed. He smacked his hands on the log, gave his cuffs a fierce yank apart as if he could rid himself of them by sheer force of will. Then he lay backwards on the ground in frustration, glaring up through the overhanging leaves with a furious expression and mouthing curse words, presumably at the gods. The girl crossed her arms, pressed her cut hands into the crook of her elbows, and waited for him to calm down.

'Are you done?'

He said nothing, just lay on his back in smouldering silence.

'I'll leave you here, head for the Inn,' the girl said. 'I should be gone three hours at the most, less if I cadge a ride off a local. I'll get a broadsword or proper axe. Then I'll come back.'

'You won't come back,' he said.

'Yes, I will. I promise.'

Jaime rolled onto his side, defeated. 'I wonder how long until North soldiers come along here, pick me up?' he mused.

'Stop being so hopeless! It achieves nothing,' she said, irritated. 'I've lost my horse, I'm going to a place I swore I'd never go to again, to get what _you_ want, so the least you can do is quit crying about your fucking handcuffs.'

He eyed her listlessly, said nothing. She took the pack off him and untied a pouch inside. Tipped out a handful of coins and some jewellery, considered them, then stuffed the lot into the pocket of her pants. She took the water flask and drank some, then put it back. 'I'm leaving you the pack with a blanket in it, and the pick-axe,' she said. 'You could cause some damage with it if you had to. Even cuffed.'

'What about you? You lost your bow back at the bridge.'

'I'll survive.'

He looked a little grateful, at least. 'So, tell me. What is it you have against the Crossroads?' he asked, sitting up, some of the normal irreverence back in his voice. 'What haunts you there? Did you get ripped off in a trade gone wrong? Some soldier confiscate your illegal bounty? I'm dying to know what memory was so bad you swore _never_ to return.'

The girl just stood there and looked at him a long moment. The moon shone its soft light on the road and made every rut in it shimmer like a wave. A low mist rose off the land, smudging the sharpness out of the world. She thought about not answering Jaime's question. Thought about lying. Then she opened her mouth and the words just spilled out.

'It's where my brother was killed.'

Jaime looked at her, stunned.

'He... I don't know where, exactly. It might've been at the Inn, or in the forest, or on the road, or by the river... I don't know. I mean, he died, I know that. Everyone around here knows that. But where he took his last breath, where his bones lie... I don't know.' She breathed in, stared unseeing at the trees, clenched and unclenched her fists. 'I wish I knew. I would come here all the time, then. Bring flowers for his grave. A nice headstone. I'd sit at the place where he died, and talk to him. Tell him I missed him. Tell him all about Sooty; he loved Sooty.' The girl smiled sadly. 'About his nieces, how they're growing up. They're such cheeky kids, just like him. Redheads, too. One day soon they'll be older than he ever was.' She choked on the bitterness of her words. 'How is that... _right?' _

She paused, struggling to hold herself together. 'If I knew where he was, I'd come here all the time. But I don't. I probably never will. So this place is, like you say, _haunted_ for me.'

Neither of them spoke. Finally, the girl released a long-held breath, turned to go. 'Well. See you in a little while.'

She started off down the road, her footsteps tapping, her figure fading into the mist.

Jaime stood up, stared after her. 'Your brother... his name was Mycah?' he asked quietly. But of course, he already knew the answer. And of course, she didn't hear him. She'd already vanished into the fog.


	11. Memories

The girl kept to the verge as she walked. The moonlight made uneven patches on the road merge together, so although she could see well enough to know where she was going, she kept stumbling on unexpected bumps and dips.

Everything was silvered by the mist, and the trees cast stripy black shadows in her path. She found herself stepping over them, jumping the wide ones_. If only I don't tread on a shadow then... _she thought, before stopping herself. _Then... what? Everything will work out? Sooty will come back? She's probably half-way home to Goldgrass by now. _The girl's thoughts flicked to Jaime. _Then Jaime will stay with me? _

She hadn't consciously realised what it was she actually wanted, until just then. But as soon as the want crystallised itself in her mind, she smothered it like a runty whelp_. Let's try and stay somewhat in the realms of reality_, _shall we?_ she chastised herself.

She walked for over half an hour when the sound of hooves came from up ahead. Two riders emerged from the veil of fog wisping across the road, and reined in when they saw her. They wore chainmail and leather armour, with dark blue coats and smooth grey helmets. Their shields bore the sigil of a snarling wolf.

'Hold, girl,' one of them called out, as she made to walk past. She halted, looked up at them blandly.

'A moment of your time,' the soldier said. His tone made it clear that this was not a request but an order. His horse shifted restlessly and tossed its head, the bit clacking against its teeth. 'A late night for a lone girl on the Riverroad,' he observed.

'Yes. I was unfortunate enough to lose my horse, and all my belongings.' She gestured up the road. 'Is it far to the Inn? I've been walking for hours.'

'Not far,' said the soldier. He studied her. She felt uncomfortable, having spent most of her life avoiding the attention of soldiers, lawmen and all persons of authority.

'We heard a clanging noise earlier, coming from this direction. Any idea what that may have been?'

'Yes, I'm afraid that was me. My horse had lost a shoe and I was trying to bang it back on. She didn't take kindly to my amateur farrier skills, and took off on me.' The girl smiled. 'Damn horses.'

'I see. Well that would explain the noise we heard from our camp. So, girl. Do you live around here?'

'In, ah... RedHollow. My family live here and I'm visiting them.'

'What's your name?'

She hesitated fractionally. 'Robberta.'

'Well, Robberta, if you're from the Hollow then you'd know there has been a cordon of soldiers there since last night, searching for an escaped prisoner. We're sending out patrols throughout the Riverlands, and everyone is being questioned as to who they may have seen on their travels.' The soldier regarded her closely. 'This man is very dangerous. He is travelling alone and shouldnt be approached in any circumstances.'

'Oh,' the girl said. There was a silence. 'Well, thanks for letting me know.'

'You haven't run into anyone of that description?'

'Of what description?' the girl asked innocently. 'It's just, 'dangerous' 'escaped prisoners' don't tend to wander around advertising that fact. In my experience.'

The soldier looked stern. '_Have you seen,' _he emphasised curtly, 'any lone man, unkempt, acting suspiciously_, in these parts_?'

She pondered the question, then snapped her fingers. 'There's a dead body over the bridge, that way.' She pointed. 'I think maybe attacked by a wild animal or something... my horse shied at it when we crossed. That's probably your fellow. You should check it out,' she smiled helpfully. 'As long as you don't need a head. I think that was... absent.'

The soldiers looked at each other, then at her. She waited.

'We will check that out come the dawn,' the main one said.

She nodded.

The soldiers swung their horses' heads around and began to ride back the way they'd come.

'Wait!' called the girl, hurrying up to them. 'D'ya think you could possibly give me a lift?'

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The Stark soldiers dropped her near their camp further up the road, and she thanked them, wished them luck in locating their missing prisoner. She headed on along the Riverroad until out of sight, then cut through the bush towards the river. She was only about a mile now from the Crossroads Inn, and long-forgotten landmarks rose at her out of the darkness. A gate, a corner, a cluster of willow trees. Her pulse began to race. Despite the chill night air, sweat dampened under her arms and she felt short of breath.

_Seven hells but I hate this place, _ she swore, then reminded herself that Jaime was expecting her back soon, with tools. Jaime, who had nothing to do with the bad memories taunting her here, who was right now being hunted by soldiers and she his only help. Something melted inside of her at the thought of him; his wry smile, the way his fringe fell into his green eyes._ It's nothing, I'm just fond of him, is all._ She pressed on.

Making her way along the riverbank, she stared out into the swirling current. Despite her best efforts, with each step closer to the Inn more bad thoughts tormented her_. Was this where you died, little brother? Here? Besides the water, or further over here, among this copse of trees? Is this where you ran for your life? You were a fast runner. I was so proud of you. __Were you scared at the end? Were you in pain? _She felt cold fingers grab at her heart and squeeze it_. Am I walking over your bones, now? Is this the soil fed with your blood?_

The girl stopped, shaking, unable to go on. The Inn was close, she could smell the smoke from its chimneys, but she needed to compose herself. She sat down on the bank and looked across into the far distance, imagining for a brief moment that she saw Sooty running through the trees on the other side. She knew it was only the shadows that clouds made as they drifted across the moon, but she whistled anyway. In the still air, the sound seemed to hang, reverberating across the black water.

She whistled again. After several minutes had passed, she picked up some pebbles on the ground beside her and skipped them onto the river. They leapt lightly across the surface, kicking up little white splashes that caught the light. _I could only ever get four skips, little brother_, she thought, _you_ _once got seven_. Caught up in her memories, she didn't hear the footsteps until they were directly behind her.

'What are you doing?'

The girl jumped up and spun around, her heart thudding. '_Fuck!'_

The boy stepped back. 'Sorry I... we heard whistles. What are you doing?'

The girl put her hand to her chest, feeling a stab of adrenaline from the shock. 'What _the fuck _are you doing sneaking up on me like that? If I'd had my bow with me you'd have an arrow in your neck by now!'

The boy didn't look intimidated at her outburst. Instead, he scowled. His slight frame was semi-shadowed, shaggy brown hair falling in his face. _Aged about 13_, the girl thought_. Here I am in the very place where my own brother died, yelling at another boy his same age. What is wrong with me?'_

'Sorry,' she said, in a more normal voice. 'You startled me.'

'Do you always swear so much?' the boy rebuked her. His accent, unlike her own, was well-bred.

'Yeah, unfortunately I do.'

'Are you lost?'

'No.' The girl pulled a face at that ridiculous notion. 'I'm on my way to the Inn. I need to buy an axe. Or, a sword. You wouldn't have, or know where I could get one, would you?' She stuck her hand in her pocket, pulling out her moneypouch. 'I can pay you.'

The boy shook his head, his fierce expression charmingly at odds with his long-lashed grey eyes. 'We need ours.'

'We?' The girl laughed. 'Who's this _we? _Are there more of you kids running around out here at night? It's not safe, you know. Ghosts haunt this place.'

'I don't believe in ghosts,' the boy said, scathing.

The girl grinned. 'Well aren't you just the fearless Knight.' She bowed dramatically. 'I'm so glad you're here now to protect me, brave one.'

The boy smiled a little, and without the scowl he looked even younger than she'd first thought. 'My friends and I are having a rest, something to eat. We're on our way somewhere too. They're watching me, there in the bushes,' he pointed. 'In case you were, mad or something. Tried to bite my head off.'

The girl looked into the bushes but couldn't see a thing. She didn't like being spied on. 'Are they satisfied now that I'm not the head-biting type?'

The boy ignored her question, and glanced around, before fixing her with his intense stare again. It was cute, but unnerving, at the same time. He narrowed his eyes. 'Why were you whistling? Did you lose your dog?'

'Not a dog. A horse.'

'You taught your horse to come when you whistle?' The boy looked impressed. 'I had a... um, a dog once who came when I whistled. But I never tried to teach a horse.'

'It's easy, just start them young,' the girl advised. 'My horse protects me and everything.'

'I lost my dog, too. Around here... she was protecting me too but, she ran off.' The boy's eyes glazed over no doubt at the memory of his own, similar, loss. Then he shook himself out of it. 'Where's your horse, now?'

'She's gone. Scared off by a big -' The girl stopped herself, not wanting to terrify this kid with tales of monster wolves lurking nearby,' - a big badger. It was growling and... yeah. You know horses. Scared of their own shadows.' She shrugged.

'Oh. I'm sorry. I guess it was carrying all your stuff too. What happened to your hands?'

The girl regarded her open palms as if only just noticing them, oozing blood and pus and criss-crossed with their many abrasions. 'I fell over.'

The boy looked unconvinced. 'On what, a pile of knives? Hey. Why don't you come and have something to eat with us? 'Cause you lost all your stuff and we have food. We've got bread and cheese, and my friend caught a fish. Come on.' He turned and vanished into the darkness of the trees like a sprite. The girl's mouth watered at the mention of food, and she paused, then followed. _Remember Jaime is waiting for you, and he's hungry too. Don't stay too long._

In the thick scrub, it was hard to see further than an arm's length in front of her. She smelled smoke, and then the glow of a small fire appeared, hidden by a thicket of brush. The boy led her into a campsite where another shorter, fatter child sat on a fallen branch by the fire, chewing on a hunk of cheese. The girl stopped so that he could see her clearly. 'Hey,' she said. 'Your friend said I could, share some of your food?' The scent of cooked fish and toasted bread filled her nose, and her empty stomach spasmed.

'Arya is always givin' away stuff,' the fat boy grumbled. 'We aint even got enough food left for us.'

'Well if you hadn't eaten it all on the first night, we'd have more, wouldn't we?' said a man's voice behind them. It sounded vaguely familiar and as the girl turned, a huge smile broke across her face.

'What the fuck are you doing here?' she asked, delighted. 'Gendry!'


	12. Arya

Gendry's arms wrapped around her, crushing her into a hug. She wasn't really a hugger, but she had to admit it was kind of nice. He smelled of burnt wood and metal.

'Where have you been hiding this last year and a half?' he said, stepping back and holding her out at arm's length. 'Arya, HotPie, this is... what name you goin' by these days?'

The girl turned and gave the skinny kid next to them a closer inspection in the light of the flames. 'Is your name Arya? Gods, I thought you were a boy! I had a brother about your age. I was thinking of him when you... surprised me. I guess that's why.'

'Nah,' the kid called Arya said, shrugged. 'Most people think I'm a boy.'

'You're too pretty to be a boy.'

The kid glowered and Gendry laughed. Even HotPie snorted through his mouthful of cheese. 'It's only 'cause she don't know you well enough that she ain't hit you yet,' Gendry guffawed. 'Just don't go callin' her a lady, trust me. It hurts.'

The girl smiled politely at what was obviously an in-joke.

'Where's your brother?' Arya asked.

'What?'

'You said you _had _a brother. Where is he?'

The girl narrowed her eyes, irked by the kid's needling. 'I don't know,' she replied, in a tone that warned the topic was now closed.

Arya looked unsatisfied by this answer, but moved straight on 'What's your name?'

'Hey kid, settle.'

'I'm not a _kid_,' Arya said indignantly, 'and I only asked who you were.'

'Well, I called myself Robberta before, to some _nosy-arse_ soldiers.'

'Is that your name?'

'No.'

Gendry interrupted the escalating tension, a hint of worry in his voice: 'Soldiers? Were they Lannister soldiers?'

'Nah. Those are the red ones, right?' The girl deliberately didn't volunteer any more information. _Whatever it is you all are running from, it's not my business_. _Just like mine isn't yours_. Arya opened her mouth to possibly fire off another twenty questions, but Gendry shook his head slightly and she closed it again.

Gendry turned back to the girl, put his hand on her shoulder. She noticed how broad his arms were, how much he'd filled out since she'd last seen him. 'Well, it's good to see you, _Robberta,'_ he grinned. 'The Capital was a duller place without your visits.'

'I still go there,' the girl said,' I just don't hang about. Drop and run, on market day.'

'Yeah, it's got kind of crazy there I heard, with the war and everything.' A crease formed between Gendry's eyebrows. 'I missed you on Steel street. I could always see you from Mott's doorway at the end of every other month, you and that ugly horse. And I hate to say this girl, but -' he looked her up and down, 'You don't half look like shit.'

'I don't half feel like shit, too,' she grinned tiredly.

'Is that blood on your top? And your hands...'

'Sunburn.'

Gendry raised his eyebrows, but let it go. 'Days have been stinking hot lately,' he agreed.

'And some idiots say winter is coming.' The girl tried to laugh and ended up coughing instead. When she looked up, the kid Arya was fixing her with a dirty look.

'Fire always burns brightly right before it dies out,' Arya said. The girl smiled at her thinly. _Weird kid._

'You look in need of some food and a bit of a sit down.' Gendry patted her shoulder, squeezed a little with his strong fingers. The girl thought he might go in for another hug, so she stepped over to the fire and held out her hands as if to warm them. The heat on her scabs made them sting, but she ignored it.

Gendry intercepted the cooking pan on the way to HotPie's mouth, tipping a portion of the food from it onto a thick slice of bread, slapped some cheese on top, and a scoop of white fish. He handed this to the girl. 'Thanks,' she smiled gratefully at them all, and tried to resist cramming the whole lot into her mouth at once. In the end the bite she took was almost too big to chew.

'Mmmm,' she mumbled appreciatively.

'Have a seat,' Arya offered, then turned to Gendry. 'How do you two know each other?'

'Ahhh, she used to deliver stuff to the markets in KingsLanding, a while back. We talked a few times, I shod her horse, she brought me gear I wanted if I asked nice... what _was_ that posh looking shield you got me that time?' Gendry looked at the girl, but she still had a mouthful of food and couldn't talk, so he kept going, 'Remember? With the serrated gauntlet, and the spikes and the_... lantern _on it? That thing weighed a tonne, I think I pulled a muscle just gettin' it from the street to the back of the workshop. Never used it o'course, but damn it looked impressive.'

The girl swallowed. 'Ah yes, the Lantern Shield. Dazzling the enemy in the eyes while simultaneously breaking their sword and then stabbing them to death. I'm sure it looked good on parchment. As long as it impressed the _L__adies_.'

'You liked it well enough.'

'I could hardly pick the damn thing up, it near killed me and Sooty dragging that shield all the way from Deepwood.'

'Sooty's strong as an ox. Where's she at these days?'

The girl's cheeks were full of food again, and before she could answer, Arya spoke for her: 'Is that her horse? She said she lost it. That's why she was whistling before.'

'Oh I'm.. hells. I'm sorry,' Gendry said.

The girl kept chewing, nodded, smiled. _Eat this food, get out of here_, she thought.

'So where you off to, on your way to the Capital?' Gendry asked.

The girl finished her food, and tried a jest, 'Not if you're not there any more, Gendry.' It was obvious her heart wasn't in it though, and the teasing fell flat.

'Gah, don't make like you fancied me, not after avoidin' me for years.' Gendry turned to Arya, who was listening intently. 'I used to annoy the crap out of this girl, followin' her 'round the market like a puppy. Hey, remember when I called you My Queen for the entire day? You was paradin' around wearing that choker of jewels you was meant to deliver to some Lady, and your hair all up in a fancy 'do; you was just like her.'

'Like _fuck_!' the girl shuddered. She glanced at Arya. 'Sorry.'

'A younger, scruffier, more foul-mouthed version of her, mind,' Gendry elaborated, with a grin.

'I think peering into the smithy's furnace all day made you go blind.'

'You never even seen the Queen, girl. What would you know.'

'Yeah commoners like me don't know what we look like. Never had a mirror, me,' the girl rolled her eyes. 'Don't go dragging me into it your royal fantasies, just 'cause everyone was always telling you how much you look like The King.'

'Yeah, the old, dead one.' Gendry rubbed his head with one hand, as if self-conscious. 'The new one, not so much.'

'The boy King? Ugh. I hear he's a corrupt little coward, so,' the girl couldn't help herself. 'Maybe he won't be King long. Maybe someone will drive a big lance right up his arse and hoist him like a flag for the crows to pick his eyeballs out.' Too late, she regretted her vitriol, would have bit it back if she could.

The other three stared at her, and Gendry looked a bit startled. _Why'd you go and say that for? _ the girl scolded herself. _You don't know where their loyalties lie. Don't let old friendships slip you up._

'I'm sorry, I'm just... it's been a long day. You know those days that go on forever?' The girl yawned, stretched her legs. The food and the sitting had made her weary. 'I still need to get to the Inn, buy something, before it closes. Thank you so much, though, for the food.'

'If you can wait five minutes I'll come with you,' Gendry said. 'We was just finishing up gatherin' enough firewood to last us the night. Wasn't we, HotPie?' He gave the fatter kid a hard look, and HotPie reluctantly put down the pan and slowly followed Gendry out of the circle of firelight, still licking his fingers.

The girl stared into the flames. They leapt up and fell back like grasping hands. Sparks drifted upwards on columns of smoke and winked out in the blackness. Now that it was just the two of them, Arya's dogged attention was hard to shake.

'Are you travelling on your own?'

'Yeah. I like my own company.'

'We've been walking for days, you're the first person we've seen.'

'You'll see more people around here, soon enough. Not all of them friendly. Can you use that sword?' the girl pointed to the steel resting against Arya's seat.

'Yeah. I'm good at it,' Arya's lips turned up with a hint of pride.

'You look like you'd be quick. Quick beats strong, every time. Especially if you get 'em in the neck, right _there.' _The girl mimed a sword thrust. 'Dead.'

Arya looked pleased, the way another type of girl would if you praised her sewing. 'I knew someone used to say that.'

'Meh, I know a lot of people. I guess we have mutual friends.'

'Were you and Gendry... ?' Arya looked awkward.

'_Fuck_ no! I mean, sorry. No. We were just friends,' the girl laughed a little. 'Just used to talk sometimes, when we ran into each other, you know?'

'Do you live in KingsLanding?'

'No. I... well I grew up around here, actually. But I haven't been back here for a while.'

'Why not?'

The girl looked pained, it was on the tip of her tongue to tell Arya it was none of her business. But then she sighed. 'Just bad memories,' she said, quietly. 'My brother he... died here. I just miss him sometimes, is all.'

Something stirred in the depths of Arya's grey eyes, a kind of knowing coldness, and they glazed over like frost settling on a puddle. 'I have bad memories of this place, too.'

The girl felt a chill breeze rise up her spine, like ghostly fingers brushing against it. She shuddered, pulled her jacket closer around herself. The fire crackled and spat, and it almost sounded like voices whispering. Arya went on, with a soft intensity, 'But you don't need to worry. I'm going to make it right. I say their names before I go to sleep.'

'Who's names?' the girl asked, unnerved, wondering if this kid was quite right in the head.

'My enemies.'

'What enemies?'

'You have to _know your enemies.'_

'Huh?'

Arya looked up, away from the fire, and her big eyes were black like holes in her head. As if she didn't have any eyes. 'When a dog is sent to kill someone, is it the dog's fault? Or the one who sent it?'

The girl shivered. This kid was creeping her out. 'I'd say... a dog doesn't know any better. Like, with my horse; if I told her to attack someone. It's my fault, not hers.'

'But people don't have to do what other people tell them. Do they?'

'I don't know,' the girl said. 'Maybe. Sometimes. It's complicated. What is this about?'

Arya's eyes glittered like shards of ice. 'In the end, it doesn't matter how a person dies. How someone dies isn't... who they are.'

'What do you mean?' the girl said. The food and warmth had lulled her, but now she sat upright on the edge of her seat. 'What the _fuck_ are you even _talking _about?'

'If your brother died here you shouldn't be afraid. I had a friend died here, and a wolf, too. They were buried together. I always think the wolf is looking after him.' Arya's voice was flat, emotionless. 'She was a good wolf. She wouldn't hurt anyone.'

The girl started trembling, dug her nails into her hands. She waited for Arya to say something else but the silence stretched on, broken only by the snap of twigs in the fire.

'Your friend.. where was he buried?' she heard herself say, as if from a great distance. Blood rushed in her ears. She dug her fingernails into her palm to keep from shaking, heedless of the fresh blood that leaked from them. _Was this the answer, here? Will I get resolution for you Mycah, here with this strange kid who once knew you, on this day that never seems to end?_

The girl thought that if time stood still now she could be happy, because right at that moment, before Arya opened her mouth to speak, there was a faint flicker of hope. Hope that Arya would finally be the one to give her the answer she so desperately wanted. _Needed_.

'I don't know where,' Arya shook her head, and the hope flicked out.

'He wasn't trying to kill the boy King, like everyone says!' the girl whispered, tears welling up and blurring her vision. 'He would never hurt... _anyone!'_

'I know,' Arya said.

There was a loud crash as a log was thrown and splintered onto the fire, sending the sparks whirling and jumping crazily. The girls started, looked up. Gendry dusted his hands, as HotPie staggered up behind him, barely able to see where he was going over a massive pile of branches.

'Come on then,' Gendry said, 'You girls finished gossipin'? Let's go.'


	13. Inn

Gendry and the girl left the small campsite and went out into the darkness. They followed the river downstream, in the direction of the Inn. She'd refused his offer of extra food for her journey, insisting him and his friends keep what supplies they had left for themselves. A part of her was relieved to be away from Arya and her unsettling words, but an equal measure wanted to run straight back and demand a thousand answers.

Gendry suggested that for cutting metal links the best tool was a long-handled axe with a downward curving, preferably wedge-shaped head. He started to outline the merits of crucible-processed steel over cemented, but the girl wasn't listening. All she could hear was Arya saying: '_I had a friend died here, and a wolf too..._'

There had been talk of a wolf who was said to have attacked the Prince that day, along with Mycah. Was it possible that Arya had been there? Had she and Mycah really known each other? Or was Arya some kind of witch?

_Or, have I simply read too much into the whole conversation by the fire, too tired and upset to hear anything except that I wanted to hear?_

'Who is that kid you're travelling with?' she asked Gendry, interrupting his steel-processing review.

'Arya?' He said the name somewhat guardedly.

'She's a bit... odd. Don't you think?'

'No more than anyone.'

'She's kind of obsessed with death. Revenge. More than... most little girls.'

'She's older than she looks,' Gendry said. 'And besides, she's been through a lot. Everyone copes with stuff in their own way.'

'Who is she, exactly?'

'What do you mean? She's a refugee from the Capital, like me, and HotPie.' Gendry looked shifty.

'Oh you're the worst liar, Gendry Waters. I know you three are on the run from Lannister soldiers, and you want to protect her, of course. That's fine. You always had a soft spot for urchins. But this is me you're talking to. _The_ least likely person in all the seven Kingdoms to dob anyone in for anything.'

'I dunno if I should say, she'd kill me. She ain't even told me everything.'

'It's _me_, Gendry. Here I thought our history together meant something.'

He avoided the girl's gaze, conflicted. Finally he stopped walking and turned to face her, talking quietly although the riverbank was otherwise deserted. 'Alright, but you can't breathe a word of it to no-one.'

'Promise.'

'She's a Lady. A Highborn. You know Lord Stark? Guardian of the North and such? Until he got his head lopped off for treason after the old King died?'

The girl nodded. 'Yeah, how the war started and all that. I got the gist of it.'

'Well, she's _his_ kid. Grew up in fucking _Winterfell.'_

'Really? A proper little Lady.' The girl turned this information over in her mind, trying to match it up with what else she knew. 'So why's she's slumming it out in the wilderness with lowlifes like you and Hotdog?'

'Hot_Pie_. And us lowlifes are better company than none. She wanted out of the Capital. When her father was executed, she thought it wisest to leave, and join us lot headed for the Wall.'

'You at the Wall?' the girl laughed. 'You spent all your life in a armoury with your shirt off, where it was hot enough to melt your chest hairs. You whine about frosty mornings.'

Gendry grinned and shoved her. 'Didn't have no choice did I? Like most of 'em.'

'Why was Arya in the Capital with Lord Stark in the first place?'

'Because he was appointed Hand of the King when the other one died. And her sister was engaged to the Prince. Now King. O' course none of that worked out real well in the end.'

The girl must have looked a bit lost, because Gendry sighed. 'I know you pride yourself on knowing as little as humanly possible 'bout the Nobility.'

'Hey, I'm not totally ignorant,' she bristled. 'I do know the basics.'

Gendry smirked. 'Sure you do. I bet you couldn't even tell me the King's full name.'

'The old one or the new one?'

'Either.'

'King Robert Baratheon.'

'Well that was too easy. Name a Lord.'

'Any?'

'Any,' he challenged.

'The new Lord of Winterfell, King in the North? I believe his name is...' she paused and tapped her chin as if thinking. 'Lord Robb Stark.'

Gendry looked suitably impressed. 'What's got into you, you takin' lessons?'

As they walked on, the girl kept prying. 'So, this Arya kid. She was travelling with the old King, King Robert's, party when they came through here about a year and a half ago?'

'I guess.'

She thought for a while, then nodded.

'Why you wanna know all this for, anyhow?' Gendry asked.

'I merely care who you're travelling with,' she said innocently. 'Can't have a friend of mine wandering around the countryside with just anyone.'

'I would be touched,' Gendry put his hand to his heart, 'if I'd ever known you to care about another person, outside of your own family. And your horse.'

'That hurts. I care about people.'

'Only so far as you can use 'em.'

'Gendry!' she mock-punched him.

'Luckily I like bein' used.'

The trees began to thin out, and they reached a dirt track that led away from the river. 'This is the way to the Inn', the girl said. 'Do you think it'll still be open?'

'It's an Inn. Pretty sure they stay open.'

They started along the narrow track, keeping watch for other travellers or soldiers. The silhouette of the Crossroads Inn loomed into view, its turrets towering over the surrounding trees. A few wagons and carts were parked at the side, and there were a couple of low building that the girl remembered as stables and staff quarters. A bell tower sat behind them. Light shone faintly from the open doors. Gendry and the girl stopped and crouched behind a hedge that marked the tended property of the Inn, scanning the gardens for anyone either of them would rather avoid.

The dirt track they'd been following ran through a gap in the hedge and disappeared around the corner of the out-buildings, where untrimmed shrubs and weeds probably hid a back entrance for deliveries and staff. Before the hedge was a wide ditch, which under the moonlight looked black with sludge. A haze of mosquitoes danced around it, and unknown creatures scuttled and splashed. The girl wrinkled her nose at the stench.

'What _is_ that?'

'Looks like a drainage ditch. From the kitchens, most like,' Gendry said. 'If there's rats I ain't going near it.'

She gave him a look, pointedly appraising his thick biceps and wide shoulders. 'You scared of rats?' she joked.

Gendry held one hand to his stomach, looking pained. 'I could tell you stories.'

The girl took a step, her boot squelching into the water-logged ground. 'This _stinks.'_

'Yeah. And... there's rats.'

'I don't recall you being so squeamish, Gendry. I'm sure the rodents here in Riverlands are of no lesser quality than those on Steel street.' She took another slurping step. 'Ugh, this place is a fucking swamp. They probably dump all the muck from the bathrooms out here too. Sewerage waste.'

'We could go 'round the front but then we're out on the King's Road. Could be soldiers there, ' Gendry said.

As if on cue, voices came from the stables, and a couple of men walked out, leading three horses apiece. They hitched them to a rail and began to saddle them. The girl looked over at Gendry, and he shook his head. 'What if there's Lannister soldiers in there?' he whispered.

'I haven't seen red soldiers for months, they're all holed up in KingsLanding.'

'I don't wanna risk it, for the sake of the others.'

'It's alright,' the girl assured him. 'You stay here, I'm just going to check things out.'

'Don't be long,' Gendry said. 'I think there's leeches here too. I ain't mad keen on leeches neither.'

The girl rolled her eyes and crept away from him along the hedge. She skirted around the worst of the boggy ground, sneaking past the men saddling the horses, keeping behind the parked wagons and in the shadows. She came out on the King's Road, and walked up to the front door of the Crossroads Inn. It had been so long since she'd been here that she felt like a stranger. _I used to play in these gardens, feed the cart-horses, sit under my father's table playing marbles while he had a pint after work. It seems like a lifetime ago._

Walking up the paving stones, the smoke and smells seeping from cracks under the entrance arch awakened old memories. For a moment the ghosts of everyone from her past stood beside her on the step. She paused to clear her head, then pushed the heavy door open and went in.

Inside, the air was stale and hazy with wood-smoke, thick with the fumes of old food, old sweat and the mud from hundreds of boots. The rows of bench seats on either side of the room had a few people in them, some fast asleep or passed out with their heads in their arms, but overall the place wasn't crowded. It was more run-down than the girl remembered, she guessed the war wasn't great for business. Table tops were cluttered with empty plates and glasses, cobwebs hung in faintly drifting ribbons from the ceiling.

She strolled up the aisle, her clothes and hair dishevelled enough not to look out of place among the equally grimy clientele. Well-practised at avoiding eye-contact, she slipped unnoticed past a table of card-players, a troubadour strumming an instrument, and a fat man bawdily singing along. On the last table, a group of men were laughing uproariously. No-one paid her any attention. Slouched on the bar, a man not much older than herself gave her the once over.

'Help you?'

'Yes,' the girl said. 'I'm looking to buy an axe, and I heard you were selling.'

He yawned, showing a haphazard shelf of yellow teeth. 'Might be. Depends what you got.'

'Twenty coins, and two fine rubies.' She patted her pocket.

The man looked bored. 'I have nothing to suit your budget.'

'How about you tell me what axes you have for sale, and we'll discuss it further.'

'How about you double your offer and I'll _peruse_ my _inventory_.' His watery eyes regarded her with a cunning she recognised. Years of haggling and bartering at markets around the country had made the girl an expert in knowing when she was about to be ripped off. And this was undoubtedly one of these times. Inwardly she cursed, but she didn't have time to spare, nor any other options right now. Jaime was relying on her. She'd already been away too long.

'Thirty coins, two rubies.' The coins and stones in her purse were everything she had to show for the last three month's deliveries. She thought of her sister and nieces, how much they relied on her earnings just to survive. She thought of how dark and cold the nights were in Goldgrass without oil for the lanterns, how the girls needed new jackets.

'Thirty coins?' the InnKeeper shook hs head. 'I may have a small skinning knife for that price.'

The girl fixed him with a steely glare. 'Cole at RedHollow sells broadswords for thirty coins.'

'Then I suggest you go and buy off him.'

'Fine.' The girl pulled out her pouch, weighed it in her hand. She leaned forward keeping a smile on her face and hissed: 'I have exactly thirty-five coins and a number of different stones here. Their combined worth is twice that of any weapon you keep out the back of this degenerate establishment. I want a heavy, long-handled axe capable of splitting metal, and it's only because I'm in a good mood that I don't go back outside, bring my horse into your bar and have her rearrange your teeth with her hooves.'

The InnKeeper didn't look particularly intimidated, he was the landlord of a notorious Inn, after all. But some of her bluster must have impressed him, or maybe he'd heard stories, because he returned her fake-smile with one of his own and disappeared out the back. The girl sat down on a nearby vacant bench and waited.

The group of men who'd been so loud behind her were finishing up their drinks. One of them drained his glass and belched loudly. 'Glad you're so sure of yourself, Locke. I still reckon we shoulda kept 'er for bear-bait.'

'What, and risked the wrath of the Tyrells and the Lannisters? You 'eard what she said,' replied the man evidently called Locke, who sat directly behind the girl. He mimicked a woman's voice, '"He'll pay a lot for me_. Unharmed." _No-one wants their property all spoiled now, does they?'

The girl sat very still, suddenly paying attention.

'He's only gonna kill 'er anyways,' the first man said, and burped again.

'No, she reckons they was... _special friends.' _Here the men laughed so much one of them sounded like he was dying. When they finally got their breath back, Locke went on, 'And like Roose says, the Tyrells will wanna hear what she has to say 'bout the whole Renly situation. So, that's how it is, lads. Find yerselves some other whore to have fun with.'

'Still. Was lookin' forward to seein' 'er in a dress.' The men sniggered.

'Put yer fuckin' bear in a dress it'll be a sight prettier.' Locke said. 'Ain't the promise o' riches better than ten minutes of entertainment?'

'Woulda got more 'n ten minutes out of 'er. She looked like she coulda put up a half-decent fight.'

'Shut yer gob. What's done is done.' Locke banged his empty glass down. 'Time we was off. Has Zollo saddled them horses yet?'

'How do we even know 'e's gonna pay us anyfing? He might just pay SteelShanks, seein' as that's who she's wiv. How do we know 'e's even gonna be in KingsLanding when she gets there?'

'Well look around, numbnuts. Where is he, then? We searched that fucking river for two days. The Riverlands is positively swarmin' with North soldiers. If he were here, think they'd 'a flushed 'im out by now. Not like he knows how to go bush, does he? He's a fuckin' toff.'

'Nah. He could be fish food. Stark soldiers don't care no more. Who can blame 'em. Most of 'em is sick of this war an' just wanna fuck off home. The King in the Norf is too busy stickin' his sword into his new lady love to even care how little his men give a fuck 'bout his war any more.'

Locke stood up and the other men followed him, pulled on their long coats. 'Never you mind. House Bolton knows what side to throw its hat in with.'

'Yeah. The winnin' side.' They all laughed again as they walked out.

The girl didn't stir, didn't move a muscle. She listened to the men's footsteps fading down the steps and her mind was whirling. She tried to put together what they'd been talking about. Was it Jaime? His companion, who'd been captured, had she been a woman? A woman who was claiming that if they returned her to Jaime 'unharmed' that he'd pay 'a lot' for her_? _

_A lot? Like 500 gold coins? _

_Maybe Jaime really is rich enough to make good on these promises, these men seem to think so. Is he a Lord in KingsLanding, someone valuable to the Tyrells and Lannisters? A spy? Someone captured by the North during the war, maybe a General or a Captain? Has everyone really given up on finding him?_

Or, was this conversation nothing to do with Jaime at all?

She just didn't know anything any more.

'Hey, girl.'

She looked up and saw that the InnKeeper was leaning on the bar, a long-handled, downward-curving, wedge-headed axe in his hand. She stood up, handed him the pouch of coins with one hand while taking hold of the axe in the other. It was heavy and she hefted it up to her chest, the steel resting on her shoulder.

The InnKeeper nodded at her, and she turned and walked out of the Inn. No-one at the tables paid her any attention.


	14. Gendry

'_She reckons they was ...special friends._' Locke's comment rang in her ears. She couldn't think about what it all meant right now, if anything, she was so very tired. There were random words circling in her head like puzzle pieces but she couldn't put them together. _Concentrate on getting out of here first. Puzzles can wait. _

She walked straight past the group of Northmen, as they rode out onto the King's Road. One of them stopped his horse next to her and she hesitated, but he leaned over the other way and vomited noisily onto the flagstones. The girl kept walking, clutching the axe to her chest.

Past the stables, ducking between the wagons, onto the track that led to the river. 'Gendry!' she whispered, peering through the gap in the hedge. If possible, the smell of the drains had got worse. 'Here,' he whispered back, invisible in the hedge's shadow.

She made to jump over the boggy ditch but misjudged the distance and landed ankle-deep in slush. She swore, tried to keep her other boot clear but overbalanced and had to put it down. Cold water rushed into both boots, her toes curled at the gritty consistency. She tried to move but the ooze was tenacious. She felt like she was sinking.

Gendry appeared in front of her, keeping his distance. 'Gods teeth, are you stuck? In the shit ditch?' He chortled.

'Stop fucking laughing and help,' she suggested irritably. She yanked upwards with one leg and then the other, but was worried she was going to fall forward onto her hands and knees. 'Take this,' she demanded, holding out the axe, 'It's weighing me down.' Gendry was laughing properly now, but he did manage to reach over and grab the axe from her.

'This ain't even heavy,' he said, twirling it in one hand like a baton.

'And stop showing off. It's heavy _for me_, alright?'

'Are you planning on getting out of that muck any time soon?'

'I'm stuck.' She put her hands on her hips. She could struggle out if she really tried, but it was late and she was exhausted. Gendry tossed the axe to one side and grabbed her forearm, linking them. He hauled her up out of the sludge. It clung to her ankles, made a sucking, popping sound when it finally gave her up. Gendry put his other hand on her waist and lifted her clear of the marsh entirely, putting her down on firmer ground.

'Since when did you get so strong?' she said. She took a step and her boots swilled with liquid. The bottoms of her pants wrapped around her legs, coated in filth.

'That smells... kind of bad,' Gendry observed, a wide smile on his face.

'No shit.' The girl squelched over to her axe and retrieved it. 'Even worse, I just got seriously ripped off by that godsdamned InnKeeper for this thing.'

'What did he sting you?'

The girl shook her head. 'Everything. All I had. Thirty-five coins and all my gems, too.'

'Ouch,' Gendry sympathised. 'I made them same axes and sold 'em in KingsLanding for fifteen coins apiece.'

'Yeah.' She frowned. 'You're not really helping.'

They walked back along the track to the river, Gendry carrying the axe, the girl sloshing with every stride. At the riverbank she sat down and took off her boots, rinsed them one at a time in the fast-flowing current. She put them upended on the grass to drain and waded in, letting the churning water clean the mud from her pants. It was icy cold, but served to wake her up. She leaned down and rubbed the material between her fingers, feeling the oily dregs lifting away.

'You probably got leeches on you,' Gendry remarked. He swung the axe in a chopping motion, pausing before it hit the ground and then re-hoisting it effortlessly. He sliced the weapon sideways, making an arc parallel to the ground. In his big hands, it looked like a child's toy.

'Spare me your leech obsession. They can't _actually_ hurt you.' Satisfied that she was at least relatively clean, the girl waded back out of the river. 'Arya asked about us, you know.'

'Did she?' Gendry rested the axe head on the ground. He looked amused, but pleased.

'I think she feels a bit possessive of you.' The girl wrung out the ends of her pants, started pulling on her boots.

'What did you say?' He sounded worried, and it annoyed the girl for some reason.

'Don't panic. I said we were _just friends'_.

He smiled and nodded. Rubbed one hand across his head in a bashful gesture. 'Good.'

The girl thumped her boot on the ground with more vigor than was necessary, shook it out. 'Just be careful. She's not like us, Gendry.'

'What does that mean?'

'She's Highborn.'

'Highborns is people too,' Gendry said, defensively. 'Arya's no different from you and me. She thinks of me and HotPie as if we was her own family.'

The girl snorted. 'Really? Well I never met a member of the Nobility who cared for commoners beyond what they could get out of them. Goods, services, labour, protection... once they got it from you they tend to toss you aside faster than yesterday's ashes.'

Gendry had an obstinate expression on his face. The girl recognised it, knew it meant he had his mind set. 'With all respect,' he said tightly, 'You ain't exactly hung out with much Nobility to know what you're _talking about_.'

The girl stood up and faced him. 'What's that s'posed to mean? You think I'm too common to understand how they think? You think you're better than me now, 'cause you been hanging out with _Lady _fucking _Stark_?' Maybe she was over-tired, but Gendry's stubbornness infuriated her. 'I met a lot of people in my work, more than you. I _know_ how the ones in castles think of the ones that sell them their goods, build them their keeps and sow their crops. Shoe their horses, _make their armour_.' She glared at him to drive home the point. 'I'm just saying, open your eyes. Don't play your royal fantasies; don't go being a hero for some little Lady, who won't even remember you when this is all over.'

Gendry returned her glare. 'I know what I'm doin'.'

'Good. Well don't forget to be calling her _M'Lady_.' The girl simpered sarcastically, made a poor attempt at a curtsey.

'Stop bein' such a cockweed,' Gendry sighed. 'I ain't seen you act like this before.'

'Yeah well. I guess we've been moving in _different circles_.'

'Hey, I grew up in the same circles as you, girl, had to look after meself same as you. Y'think it's easy bein' a bastard in KingsLanding? I know about them that's got Royal blood and them that's got peasant blood, and I know what side I'm on. I ain't stupid.'

Abruptly, Arya's words floated into the girl's head. '_Know your enemy.'_ She didn't know why they occurred to her right now, but they made her pause, hold back what she was about to say. She turned to look away from Gendry, out over the river. Her mind emptied of all other thought. _Gods but I'm tired. _ She felt a little delirious. The rushing of the waves filled her head, and she imagined the water pouring into her skull, washing it clean of all the confusion swirling within it.

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

'You grew up in KingsLanding,' she said, turning back to face Gendry. 'What do you know about the Royal family?'

'Nothin.' He looked sulky. 'Is this 'bout how I think I'm better than you, again? 'Cause I can assure you that workin' all the daylight hours in Mott's smithy don't leave much time for hobnobbing with the Royals.'

'No, forget that,' the girl waved his assumptions away. 'I'm sorry I said all that. That's not what I mean. I just wondered what you know of them. As people. You must've seen them, right? During... parades and stuff?'

'Yeah. I seen 'em. We left after the old King died, though, so I ain't seen much of the new King. When he was a Prince, he was kind of skinny. Blonde hair. All the Royal kids had blonde hair.'

'The old King, what was he like.'

'Fat.'

'Who else was there?'

'The King's brother was on the Council... he left the Capital around when we did, when the war started. He was a bit soft lookin'. Like he ain't never got his hands dirty.'

'They're both dead now though, right?' _ I don't care about them._

'Yeah. So, the Queen... yeah. Beautiful. Meant to be the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms, but I dunno 'bout that. I never seen her up-close. Then there was her brothers, the Lannisters. The Imp was always drunk, I heard. Or in brothels. Or, drunk in brothels. The Kingslayer was said to be the best swordsman in the Kingdoms, but I don't know 'bout that either. That's all I know, really.' Gendry shrugged. He spun the axe restlessly in one hand.

'Thanks.' The girl smiled. Felt bad for arguing with him. 'How do you do that, anyway?' She motioned for him to give her the weapon.

'Do what?' Gendry grinned, handing her the axe.

'You know. Make it look so easy.' The girl heaved the axe to her shoulder, but when she went to lift it higher the weight made her feel like she was going to tip. Gendry stepped in behind her, folded his arms under hers. 'Lift it up with both arms, close to your body, like this,' he adjusted her grip. 'Then look where you're aimin' to hit. Don't take your eyes off the spot. Push up all in one go, then let the weight of the head bring it down.' He demonstrated, taking her arms along in the movement with his. 'This blade pulls to the right a bit, so aim 'bout an inch or so to the left of what you wanna hit. You should get it.'

She tried on her own. It was hard to get it off her shoulder, and the head swung down faster than she expected. It landed with a thud on an angle off her left, the blade buried deep in the dirt.

Gendry pressed his lips together. 'Mmm-hmm. Were you... aimin' for that?'

'Aim?' the girl puffed. 'I can't even barely lift the thing.'

'You'll get a feel for it,' Gendry assured her.

'Fuck.'

They walked along the bank. She felt despondent. How was she going to accurately cut the chain without risking Jaime's hands? She had no more coin to purchase anything else. She didn't even have a horse to carry this thing back on. Gendry had done his best in advising her on what to buy, but unlike him, she hadn't spent the last ten years smashing shit with hammers.

'You'll get it,' Gendry said again, encouragingly. 'You're a tough girl. You gotta learn to handle an axe if you're gonna be tough.'

The moon was high above them in the centre of the sky, the stars scattered and smudged all about, like light shining through a threadbare cloak. _It must be well past midnight_, she thought. They reached the spot where she'd sat skipping stones earlier, and there they stopped.

'You could stay here the night, you know. Head off in the morning,' Gendry offered.

'Nah. The kids'll be sleeping. I don't want to wake them up.' She rested the head of the axe on the ground, leant on it. 'Besides, I got places to be.'

'Well.' Gendry smiled shyly. 'C'mere.' He pulled her into a hug. She felt herself relax in his embrace, the solid warmth of him. She felt sad, and didn't know why. He stepped back. 'Good luck with gettin' that... chain issue sorted.'

'You should come with me, you could cut the chain like that,' the girl snapped her fingers.

'I would if I could but... ' Gendry looked into the trees, to where somewhere nearby a small campfire burned. 'I can't leave the others. Arya, HotPie. They need me.'

'Of course. Tell them thanks for the food. And, thank you for coming to the Inn with me.'

'It was a pleasure,' Gendry said. 'Worth it to see you stuck in shit.'

She pretended to look hurt. 'Hanging out with the posh kids is making you cruel, Gendry Waters.' They grinned at each other. The girl looked at the ground, thinking. 'Speaking of Arya...'

'Don't start this again.'

'Shh, it's not that,' she laughed. 'I just wanted to know if... did she ever talk to you about a dog she had?'

'A dog?' Gendry looked uncertain.

'Yeah. One that she taught to come when she whistled. It ran off one day.'

'I dunno, I don't think so.' He wrinkled his brow as if struggling to remember. 'There was this one time when we was at Harrenhal, eatin' dinner -'

'You were at Harrenhal?'

'Yeah, that's where we been since the war started. We got captured by Lord Lannister's men.'

'You're lucky you got out when you did. I heard hundreds of people were killed there.'

'Yeah I owe Arya for that one.'

'Anyway,' the girl prodded, not wanting to hear about Arya's no doubt _amazing_ escapade. 'The dog?'

'Oh yeah. Well it weren't a dog, as such, it were a wolf-pup. Arya said she had this wolf-pup, back when she lived in Winterfell. They all did.'

'A wolf-pup?' The girl couldn't stop herself rolling her eyes, just a little. 'Fucking Highborns, always have to be different.'

'I'm ignoring your classist digs,' Gendry said, in a morally superior tone. 'Anyhow, we were talkin' about... gettin' back at people who done you wrong, or somethin', and she's told us 'bout this wolf she had, that attacked some teenager who was hurting a friend of hers. And then she had to make it run away, so they couldn't find it.'

_'They were buried together... She was a good wolf. She never hurt anyone.' _ Arya's words, speaking in the girl's head again. She rubbed her eyes. 'No, that can't be right. The wolf died. It didn't run away.'

'Well, I dunno what wolf you're talking about,' Gendry went on, 'But Arya's wolf definitely ran away. She said it bit the teenager on the hand, when he was holding his sword to her friend's face. She was the one made the wolf go.'

The girl saw clearly in her mind's eye the face of Guts, on the bridge-road, his thin lips curved in a smirk as he held his knife to her face, angled it along her cheek. She saw the shadow loom up behind him. Suddenly the vision blurred. She blinked. Now there was a different face in front of her, still with a similar smirk, but holding a massive sword to her cheek. It was bright daylight, and around them was the river bank, the water burbling loudly, not a road at dusk. Instead of Guts' dusty black coat, this teenager had on a brown tunic made of finest leather, with long sleeves made of silk. A jewel glittered on his finger as he angled the sword, pressing deeper. His hair was clean and blonde, and his eyes were light, but when he looked into hers they were Guts' eyes, full of sadistic pleasure. She felt the cold bite of the steel on her cheek, and the hot blood running down.

A grey and black flash leapt behind the teenager, growling, and clamped onto his sword arm. Then she was falling backwards and the vision blew away like smoke.

She blinked again and stepped back. She was standing next to Gendry, and it was night, the crickets burring in the earth, mist in the trees. Gendry had his hand on her arm, his forehead creased with concern. 'Hey, are you alright? You wanna sit down a minute?'

'I'm fine,' she pushed him away. She smiled. 'It's alright, I'm fine. Thank you.'

_And thank you Mycah_, she thought. _Thank you for showing me. Now, it all makes more sense_.


	15. Axe

The axe weighed heavier on her shoulder with every minute she walked away from Gendry. At first she could manage it without too much difficulty, but soon the strain on her muscles began to tell and she listed to one side. It became more and more difficult to balance and she found herself bumping into trees, stumbling over dead branches. Every jolt bruised her shoulder. Once she trod heavily into a hole and the jar sent a spike of pain up her knee. She had to sit for a few minutes, flexing and rubbing her leg until the burn dulled. _At least two hours walk to get back to Jaime, _she thought. _I'm fucked_.

Pressing her knuckles into her closed eyes, she tried to squeeze the waking dreams from them. Sometimes she swore she could hear voices talking to her; Arya whispering _Know your enemy_, or Locke in his semi-drunk loudness _We searched that river for two days_, or the poacher from RedHollow, shaking his head and telling her solemnly _Yes, but we all know why. _ Sometimes she heard Sooty nickering, but when she listened again it was only the gutteral chatter of a fox.

Fatigue and stress were causing her imagination to run away from her. She couldn't shake the feeling that her brother was there, but as she didn't believe in ghosts, this was frightening rather than reassuring. Knowing it was impossible to see into the past as she had, didn't make the vision seem any less real. Was Mycah trying to show her what had happened to him, or was an evil spirit trying to trick her? _This place really is haunted, I shouldn't have come back. Nothing good can come of it. _ But somehow she managed to block everything out and keep walking.

By the time she came out of the bush and onto the Riverroad, her shoulder ached as if someone had punched it repeatedly. She switched the axe to the other side, again, but that meant putting more weight on her sore knee. She dragged the axe behind her, the head catching on every rut and wrenching her arm. It seemed she'd been walking for hours but when she turned around and looked back she saw she'd barely gone a few hundred feet. Against her will, she let the axe handle drop onto the road, and her legs gave out too. Sitting on the pebbly edge of the gutter with her legs bent up she couldn't decide what part of her hurt more. Her shoulders, her hands, her knees, her heart. When she thought of Gendry and the kids, Arya and Hotpie, she felt inexplicably lonely. She didn't know how to deal with this either, as she'd never before been lonely. She'd always had Sooty, and that had been enough.

Time passed and a calm numbness settled on her. The shroud of mist all around gave the sensation of utter isolation, she was wrapped in a chilled blanket, trapped in the middle of a spider's cocoon. Slowly swirling fog clung to her skin like a cold sweat. She could see the axe lying besides her and it seemed quite impossible to pick it up and start walking again.

There came a distant crunch of footsteps, and then moving through the fog were darker shapes; a group of men, crossing the road in front of her. They were walking purposefully and near-silently, all with long coats and boots. The way they moved with an easy stealth made the girl think they were well-practised in travelling unnoticed. One of them turned his face towards her briefly, and she was sure he'd see her sitting there and stop, but he gave no sign. He had a scruffy beard and an eye-patch, his skin jagged with scars like a patchwork quilt. They passed by, and once their footsteps faded it was hard to believe they'd ever been there.

The girl wondered if she was still awake or had fallen asleep.

Just as she was summoning up the energy to reach for the axe handle, the ground vibrated beneath her hands. Hoof beats this time, and the creaking of wheels. Out of the dark loomed a horse and cart. From her view on the roadside, she couldn't see the driver or his load, only the shaggy head and long thick legs of the cart-horse towering over her, its round belly splashed with white patches like it'd walked through a snowdrift.

The cart stopped. A figure leaned from the driver's seat. 'You alright down there?'

The girl stood up. Gently, she held her hand out to the horse. It snuffled, breath hot on her raw palms. The smell of apples and pumpkin and leather. Whiskers brushed her fingers. She placed her hand flat on the horse's sleek neck, behind its ears where there was an almost liquid softness, feeling the steady comforting heat.

'You right, girl?' the driver asked.

'Nugget looks well,' she said, stroking his fur.

'That you, Delivery Girl?' the man pushed his hat back off his head. 'Well, I never. Haven't seen you 'round here for a while.'

'I need to get down the road a ways,' she said. 'Can you...?'

'Hop up.'

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

At the junction where the smaller road forked off the highway toward the bridge, she thanked the driver and jumped down. He lifted his hand and she nodded, not having a hand free herself to return the gesture. It was hard to balance the axe, the loaf of bread, the bag of apples and the whole pumpkin that he'd given her.

Nugget plodded off into the night, and the girl staggered away from the road into the forest. She headed in the direction of the spot where she remembered her and Jaime had been, until the load she was carrying became too unstable and she dumped everything behind a bush. She stood, trying to get her bearings in the dark. Looking for a fire. _He probably didn't make one. Too risky._ There was a sick anxiety in her stomach, a growing unease that Jaime had been captured while she was gone, or killed, or that he'd continued on his journey without her. Losing Jaime suddenly felt inevitable. She couldn't even see the point of looking for him, it was so obviously hopeless. Everything she'd done had been for nothing.

She sniffed. _Smoke. _She started walking again, faster, following the scent of it, pushing past bracken as tall as her waist, ducking under ferns. The moon trickled its light down through the branches overhead and she could see a line of greyish smoke curling up through the trees like a crooked finger. She walked over to the fallen log shielding the remains of a small fire. Jaime lay on his side with the blanket folded under his head. His eyes were closed and his breathing was deep, even.

The girl just watched him, her chest swelling as if it would burst with an indescribable emotion. Relief? _Thank all the gods that you're still here. You didn't leave me. You trusted I'd come back. _

She tiptoed around the log, stepped carefully over the pack at Jaime's feet, knelt down besides his hands. He was holding the pick-axe between them. His clothes were more tattered than she'd realised, the material of his tunic ripped in numerous places and worn through. The largest tear was where Draw's scythe had gashed his chest, and the girl could see through it to where the wound looked as if it had been closed. _He must have stitched his own cut, with my needle, _she thought, amazed at his resourcefulness. _He can't be a common criminal_, _more likely a soldier, or someone familiar with battle injuries. _Her eyes lifted to Jaime's face. His hair appeared to be recently washed, and fell in slick strands against his neck.

She was momentarily mesmerised by how peaceful he looked, younger and relaxed in the hazy light. His damp skin gleamed, now clean of dirt, and under the short beard his cheeks and jaw made strong symmetrical angles. His crooked nose was the only flaw in the perfection of his face, but to the girl this only enhanced its allure. _He's beautiful. Even skinny, even in rags, chained. How could I not see that he's the most beautiful man to ever exist? _She wanted to run her fingertips along his cheeks, to prove to herself he was actually real, and not just another hallucination. She wanted to cup his jaw, smooth her thumb over his curved lips. Even in sleep he looked like he was smiling.

She leaned over a little. He smiled, properly. She squeaked in surprise as his hands grabbed her arms and pulled her into him, rolling so that he pinned her legs underneath his. 'Jaime,' she gasped, startled.

His eyes opened and he grinned sleepily at her. 'I thought you were just going to stare at me forever,' he said. 'I thought you were never going to get around to kissing me.'

'I would have -' she protested, but then his lips covered hers, warm and insistent and irresistible, and there was really nothing left to say.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

* * *

**Author's note: This is a short chapter, and dedicated to the guest who so kindly reviewed my story and requested a cameo by Beric D. I wasn't planning on having him in the story at all but there you go. He possibly said something ironic about only living once as he crossed the road, but it was too quiet to hear.**


	16. Mycah

Jaime's kiss was both comforting and exhilarating, she felt simultaneously safe and euphoric. They kissed for a long time, she was dazed, intoxicated, she could have kissed him forever. She broke contact only to whisper 'Were you alright? Did anyone come past?'

He shook his head, staring at her mouth. 'I missed you.'

'I was only gone a few hours.'

'Huh. It felt longer.' He nuzzled her neck. She could feel how hard he was through the material of his pants. She tried to squirm closer but the chain and thick bands of the cuffs dug against them. After another minute, Jaime heaved a frustrated sigh and rolled onto his back, releasing her. The chain clanked as he moved his hands.

'I have so much to tell you,' she said. Undeterred by his restrictions, she climbed on top of him. His lips quirked up. 'Aren't you tired? Where's this _energy_ come from?'

'You inspire me,' she said.

He allowed her to lift his hands over his head, but when she went to kiss him again he brought the cuffs down and blocked her. 'No.'

'I know you want to -'

'I do want to. But not like this. Did you bring something back to remove these things with?'

'Yeah. An axe.'

'How big?'

She grinned. 'Fucking big.'

He smiled at her. 'Let's wait 'til tomorrow, then.' He gently but firmly pushed her off him. 'Lie down. Sleep now.' She turned and curled up, pushing herself snugly into the curve of him. His warmth and steady breath began to draw out all her hurts, like a poultice to her tired body and unsettled mind. An opiate trickling through her senses. Jaime breathed in deep at the nape of her neck. 'G'night, girl.'

'Goodnight.'

She slept like the dead.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Bright morning sun. She held the axe in both hands, remembering Gendry's words. '_Aim 'bout an inch to the left. Let the weight of the head bring it down.' _She felt distinctly nauseous.

Jaime sat bestride a large dead tree trunk in front of her, the chain between his hands stretched taut out in front of him. He looked much more enthusiastic than the girl felt.

'Let's do this,' he said.

Sunlight sparkled along the links, remnants of fog lifting into the air as a breeze whipped up from the direction of the river. The girl adjusted her grip, altered her stance, stalling for time. She wasn't one bit confident about swinging the heavy axe with any degree of accuracy whatsoever. Anxiety jagged through her, and her palms hurt. Muscles twinged anew as she hefted the weapon to her shoulder. The roof of her mouth was dry.

'Don't make me wait,' Jaime warned.

'I feel nervous. I think... I should have another practise shot.'

'Fuck's sake. You already practised on the pumpkin. Stop over-thinking. Just do.' He looked about to explode with impatience as she hesitated again. 'If you don't swing that axe in the next five seconds girl, I'm seriously going to... .' He shook his head.

The girl licked her lips, took one sweaty hand off the handle to wipe it on her top.

'One...' Jaime said.

'Alright, alright.'

'Two...'

She heaved up the axe and fixed her eyes an inch to the left of the chain's centre link. She tried to forget his hands were there. As she swung out and down, the axe arced through the air almost of its own volition. The jolt when it hit jarred up her arms and she let go of the handle.

They both stared at where it had landed. The steel head was sunk into the log, a long crack splitting the wood both directions from the point of impact. Jaime's right hand was perilously close to the blade, the edge of his thumb almost grazing it. The girl felt sick at the sight.

Jaime moved his left hand out to the side and the chain rattled, dropped free to the ground. He sat up, moved his right hand out to the other side. 'By the gods,' he breathed. He spread both arms as far apart as they could go, threw his head back. 'Thank fuck.' He started laughing.

The girl felt dizzy with relief, laughed as well. Jaime grabbed the axe, wrenched it out of the log and in one easy motion with his right hand, brought it down deftly on the edge of the cuff that encircled his left wrist. The point of the blade slid through the metal like butter, and the cuff gaped open. The skin on his wrist was encrusted with dirt and stained black from the metal. Jaime switched the axe to his left hand and chopped again; the second cuff fell free.

'We did it,' the girl cried, clapping in delight. Jaime jumped up and grabbed her and they danced around the campsite like kids at a name-day party. They threw the chain and the cuffs into the bushes and cheered. Finally they were spent and sprawled out on the ground.

'You did good,' Jaime said. 'I knew you would.'

'Luck,' she downplayed, blushing.

'Luck works. So.' He stretched languorously. 'We should maybe think about getting going soon.'

'That's another thing I had to tell you...' The girl crossed her legs. 'I got a lift with a local trader last night, and he told me he was heading through to KingsLanding tonight. He offered to take us with him.'

Jaime frowned. 'I don't think so.'

'I know him, he's alright. He's a good person and, he won't care about you.'

'No. Forget it.'

She got to her feet, brushed the leaves off her legs. 'If you say. But we're going to find it pretty tough walking the rest of the way to KingsLanding. I don't think Sooty is coming back. If she were anywhere around she'd have found me by now.'

'We can't stay here, the Riverroad will only get busier the longer we wait. Let's get our gear packed, think as we walk.'

'If we can wait until evening, just consider the trader idea -'

'I have,' Jaime declared. 'It's a bad idea.'

'Why can't we just wait?' _He can be so infuriating_, she thought.

Jaime lounged back against a tree with casual grace. Unrestricted by the handcuffs, he reminded the girl of a big cat sunning itself. 'Well, let's see. That man-eating wolf we saw yesterday, for one thing.'

'That wolf won't...' She paused, not wanting to sound ridiculous. 'It wasn't trying to attack us.' At Jaime's frankly incredulous look, she stammered on. 'It... it was protecting us.'

'You didn't happen to eat any wild mushrooms whilst you were gone, did you?'

'I know it beggars belief but... you know how I whistled for Sooty? Right before the wolf came? I think when it saw me being threatened by those outlaws, it was like another time, another time when it... also attacked someone.'

Jaime yawned. 'Girl. If you think it was anything other than pure good fortune that we weren't the ones ripped apart by that animal, you're deluded. I _told _you not to whistle.'

'If I hadn't whistled, we'd be dead. Well, I would be. You'd be back wherever you came from, maybe minus some limbs.' Jaime opened his mouth to say something else no doubt scathing, but she hurried on. 'There was a wolf, a pet wolf, it escaped from around here. Around the time my brother was killed.'

Jaime still looked doubtful, but raised an eyebrow at her to continue.

The girl started slowly, wanting him to understand. 'The wolf belonged to a girl, a Lady, called Arya Stark. I don't expect you to know who she is but, she was travelling with the King's party when they came through here, her father was Lord Stark, of Winterfell. He was Hand of The King. And her sister was promised to the boy King. Anyway, this Arya, she was friends with my brother. That's what's so... incredible. Unbelievable, really. But it's true! Arya was there with my brother and the boy King.' The girl drummed her fingers anxiously on her thigh as she talked. 'My brother never attacked him, _he_ attacked _my brother_. And then Arya's wolf attacked the boy King. All this time, everyone was wrong, just like I always knew they were!'

Jaime stared at her. She'd expected some reaction but he gave her nothing. Finally he said, 'So...this girl, Arya's, wolf just _attacked_ someone? For what reason...?'

'Because he was hurting my brother!'

'Why?'

'Because the boy King likes hurting people? I don't know. Some people just do. It makes them happy, to cause pain to others. It's their _thing_. Those outlaws were like that, and the boy King is too. Arya tried to protect my brother, maybe the boy King tried to hurt her as well, I don't exactly know, but then the wolf attacked him.'

Jaime's expression didn't alter. He gave no sign of recognising any of the names she'd spoken. He crossed his arms. 'And you know all this -' he asked sceptically, '- The way it happened, the motives of those involved... how?'

'A.. a friend of mine was at the Inn last night. He knows Arya. She told him.'

Jaime considered her for a long moment, his face inscrutable. At last he sighed. 'Look, girl. I'm sorry about your brother. Truly. I believe you when you say he wasn't at fault. I believe what you say happened the way you say it did. But..' He rubbed his temple where the healing stitches were irritating.

'But?'

'Do you really, honestly believe that the same wolf that used to belong to this, Arya Stark person, is still in the area, more than a year later, protecting people? It's an animal.'

She knew it sounded unlikely. She knew trying to convince Jaime of it was beyond pointless. Nevertheless, she knew it was true.

She decided not to bother persuading him further, and started organising their things instead. Gathering up the rest of the food from the trader into a pile, kicking dirt onto the fire to hide it. Scattering the charred logs into the undergrowth. 'Well, at least now you know why I hate the boy King so much.'

Jaime turned away, but not before she saw the flash of exasperation. 'His name's Joffrey.'

'And?' she snapped.

'And, I'm educating you. If we're going to talk about this. He was a _Prince_ then, not a King, boy or otherwise, and his name is _Joffrey_.'

'Fine.' The girl picked up a blackened branch and threw it forcefully into the bushes. 'At least now you know why I hate _fucking Joffrey _so much.'

Jaime reacted to her raised voice with a pained expression that told the girl he considered she was being immature, and it annoyed him to even have to witness it. 'It wasn't him killed your brother, you know,' he said, as the girl stalked around in a huff collecting their gear. 'Joffrey. He would have had someone else -'

'I know. His henchmen. But _he_ gave the order. So I don't blame them. They were just... following orders.'

'Oh, I see. You hate Joffrey, but you don't hate the men who hunted down and killed your brother because they were just following orders?' Jaime snorted air through his nose. 'I don't like to be the one to shatter your illusions but these people love killing. It's what they do best. I'd wager they could've let your brother escape, if they'd wanted, but where's the fun in that? They chose to pursue him. It was a game. The thrill of the chase, the hunt. The man who actually killed him? He would have enjoyed it.'

'I think... what I think is...' It was getting hard to breathe, to talk, but the girl tried her best to stay composed. 'I would like to think that they... whoever it was who...' She drew in a shaky breath, released it. 'The person who killed my brother. I'd like to think it was difficult for them and that they felt... it was a job and they had no choice but to do it.'

'Then you're more naive than I thought.'

'Why are you saying this?' Her voice cracked. 'Because you want me to hate the man who killed him, too? Alright, I hate him too! He never met my brother before, they never spoke a single word to each other, this man never knew one thing about him, he only took his life, based on a lie. You want me to hate him too_, alright I hate him too!_' She had the urge to scream, to punch something.

Jaime held out his hands as if she were being unreasonable. 'I'm sorry this is distressing you. Your brother's death is defining your life and maybe it's a good thing for us to talk about it now. Get it out, before we go on. You need to know I'm only trying to help you -'

'Help me? By telling me how my brother probably died? How _thoughtful_ of you.' The girl paced around the campsite, not even pretending to clean any more. 'Do you think I haven't imagined it all myself, a thousand times? You think I didn't hear the stories, about how they had to put all the pieces of him in a sack to carry; how he was cut in half; how his skull was split _right down between his eyes _with such precision that each half had the _same number of teeth in it?_ How my father begged for them to give him his son's remains but by then he'd been thrown away, like rubbish? Do you think I don't lie awake and wonder which of these stories are the truth and which aren't, and if the truth is maybe something else even worse? But please, do continue,' she gestured, sarcasm choking her words, 'because listening to you tell me how much those who did these things enjoyed doing them is really_ fucking helpful_.'

Jaime watched her, coolly. 'You are so full of hate towards the people you _think_ are to blame, but there's more than one side to every story. And you don't know the whole story.'

'I know my brother never attacked the Prince. I know the Royal family, the King and the Queen, whoever else was there, they could've stopped him being killed, but they didn't!'

'Why would they? They only heard what they heard. Attacking a Prince is a crime punishable by death. And Joffrey _was_ actually attacked, I take it?'

'By the _wolf_. By _Arya_. Not by my brother!'

'Then it's a shame that your brother had to pay for the Stark girl's crimes, isn't it?' Jaime had had enough and stepped in front of her, caught her arms as she tried to pass him. She struggled to pull away, but he was unyielding. 'Come here, girl.' He wrapped her into him and held her there, pressed tight to his warm body. She could hear his steady heartbeat. She tried half-heartedly to push away, but then gave up and let herself be held.

Jaime's voice reverberated in her ear from deep in his chest. 'Shhh. Listen to me. You don't see this clearly because you haven't grown up in their world. You're a commoner and that's alright,' He stroked her hair tenderly, smoothed it away from her face. 'It's one of the things I love about you. You see people as equals, no matter where they were born, and that's a great quality to have. But Princes and Kings... they live in a whole different world, one where they can't lose face. I mean, ever. They _have_ to be respected.'

The girl listened, the low rumble of his words reassuring. He went on: 'The whole reason Kings are Kings is not because they're any better than anyone else. They might have bigger armies, but armies don't follow people who they don't respect. Kings become Kings because they can convince other people that they should be, and it's a powerful thing, having that respect. Powerful but fragile. Do you understand?' He looked down at her face. She nodded. 'That's why, if someone shows up a King, or a Prince, to be weak, or cowardly, or _wrong_; if someone shows them up to be a normal flawed person just like everyone else, especially in front of others, then there have to be consequences. Do you understand?'

She nodded again. Having Jaime's solid body around her, his body heat, had a tranquilizing effect. What he was saying didn't matter as much as that he was holding her. She hiccuped. He walked her gently over to the log and they sat down. He hooked her hair behind her ear, pressed his lips to her forehead.

'So. Here's what I think.' He tipped her chin up so that she had to look at him. 'There were two boys fighting, as boys do, and have done, since forever. Impressing girls, boosting their status,' he shrugged. 'Normal boy stuff. One of them wins and one of them loses. I don't need to spell out to you who has to win when one of them is a Prince. Do I?'

'No,' she said quietly.

'Look, your brother had no business even being in that situation, he was a commoner like you, but thanks to his... _friendship_ with the Stark girl, unfortunately, there he was. So. It still could have ended with a few bruises, nothing serious. Your brother could have walked away with a scrape or two, let Joffrey have his win, and everything would have been fine. Until the Stark girl... what?'

'Hit him? Made her wolf attack him?' The girl's voice was barely a whisper.

He nodded. 'Escalated the situation. Irretrievably. A Prince, any Prince, simply can't overlook being made a fool of. There have to be repurcussions. _That's_ why your brother is dead. Because some little rich girl with a pet wolf couldn't control her temper.'

'She wouldn't have meant that to happen,' the girl said, but even as she defended Arya out loud a cold thing uncoiled in her gut, full of venom.

'The worst things are often done with the best intentions. Or at least, good intentions are an easy excuse.' Jaime said. His rhythmic stroking of her hair was soothing. 'Arya would have known full well she was protected by her father, Lord Stark. It's easy to be an impulsive little brat and humiliate a Prince when your father is Hand of the King. And when your sister is promised in marriage to said Prince? Why, you're practically family. I mean, what's going to happen to you, right? Especially when your new so-called friend, a common villager, with a lowly butcher for a father, is conveniently right there to pay the price for it. I'm so sorry, girl,' Jaime kissed the top of her head, 'But it sounds to me like Arya Stark was not any kind of friend to your brother. She used him for her own purposes, she used him as a scapegoat, and now he's dead because of it.'

They were silent for a long time then, the only sound the wind picking up in the trees, and the distant call of birds.

Finally the girl shifted and sat up. 'I'm sorry we have to talk about this. You're right. Everyone there that day let my brother down. I have nothing but hate for any of them.'

'Hate is a strong emotion to carry around with you,' Jaime said. 'What are you going to do about it?'

'I want people to pay, but... what can I do?' She laughed bitterly. 'I'm no-one.'

'Maybe you should try to let it go,' he suggested.

'Would you? If someone hurt your family?'

He was quiet a moment. 'No.'

'Then don't ask me to.' She leant away from him. 'One day soon they will all get what's coming to them.'

'The belief that bad people ever get what they deserve is sadly unfounded -'

She put her finger to his lips to shush him. He lifted his hand and caught her wrist, turned it over. Then, he kissed her palm, on the cuts and the grazes, softly, taking away the hurt, and she felt each feather-light touch all the way down into her belly, like little sharp tendrils of fire. He licked her wrist, pulled her arm in towards him and planted little kisses up to her elbow. By the time he stopped, she was panting. He put his fingers on the hem of her top and curled them underneath, his knuckles grazing her bare skin.

'I dont want to talk about this any more,' he said.

'No,' she agreed, faintly.

Jaime ran his hands up either side of her waist, his thumbs rubbing under her ribs, then moving up further, brushing the swell of her breasts. His fingertips skipped lightly across her nipples and she gasped as the heat inside her flared up fiercely. Then he reached for the hem of her top again and lifted it up, pulling it over her head.

She closed her eyes as the material covered her face, and by the time she could see again, Jaime's head was bowed and his mouth was on her breasts. She threaded her fingers into the back of his hair, tipped her head back. The sensations that rushed through every nerve and fibre of her body were exquisite, almost unbearable. Jaime's hands were touching her, caressing her flushed skin, leaving liquid fire in their wake. She lifted her arms, tried to stand. Tried to undo the cord of her pants. He restrained her hands and stopped her. 'Let me,' he said. 'I've been wanting to do this since I met you.'

The girl sat and waited in excruciating anticipation as Jaime, deliberately taking his time, undid the cord around her pants and then her underwear, and they fell loose to her knees. He stood and pulled her upright, letting the material pool around her ankles. His lips pressed on hers, hard, his mouth open and demanding. She kicked off her last remaining clothes, the breeze gusting up cool on her hot skin. Jaime's hands moved down her spine to the dip at the base of it, almost spanning the width of her hipbones with his wide-spread fingers. Inside she felt like she was dissolving. The muscles of his arms tensed around her as she eagerly tugged at his clothes and pushed him down to the ground.

He broke their kiss and sat down, leant back lazily, let her straddle him. She knelt on either side of his lap and removed his top, as he watched her intently with dark eyes. The green in them shone like wildfire. The girl felt like she was burning up everywhere his gaze lit her.

Her fingers lingered on the healing cut in the middle of his chest, before she bent and gently kissed it. Then she moved her mouth over and grinning, bit lightly at his nipple. He drew in a sharp breath and suddenly his hands were gripping her firmly around her hips. He sat up and pushed her backwards all in one movement. She thought she had good reflexes, but by the time she hit the ground he had her pinned. She could feel his arm under her thigh, his palm cupped around her buttock. He looked at her and smiled as he leaned his weight inexorably against her, forcing her leg higher. Her head spun and her body melted. She was mindless.

Jaime leant forward over her and, supporting himself on one hand, he slid the other hand up to the crook of her knee, securing her leg there. The girl arched her back, groaned, tried to wriggle against him but he held her still effortlessly. 'Uh-uh, girl,' he said, his voice rough with desire, barely controlled. 'Don't think you're calling the shots any more. This time we're going to do it my way.'


	17. Spy

It was mid-morning by the time Jaime and the girl finally left the campsite. The air was clear and breezy, colder than the day before and with a hint of rain to come.

The girl didn't care about the weather. She was feeling so relaxed, in fact, that nothing short of the threat of a tornado would likely have fazed her. Whatever concerns she'd had earlier about travelling on foot now seemed insignificant. Her muscles were loose, the joints of her limbs felt slack, and her insides were all mushy as if she'd been lifted and shaken vigourously until all the parts of her were mixed together.

They crossed the Riverroad, avoiding a couple of farmer's carts, and headed into the trees on the other side. No-one heeded them. The trees did not grow as thick here, and the copses were separated by open fields. The land which had been flat along the riverbank now rose into hills, dipped into valleys. Little clumps of purple and white wildflowers appeared here and there among the grass, which reached to their knees. Normally the girl would be oblivious to nature's common beauty, but today she found herself noticing how rich the colours were, how pleasant the contrast between lime green and rich purple.

The ceaseless rush of the river had been a constant background noise, as well as supplying water and direction for a week. Its absence meant having to find other water sources and ways to navigate. But this didn't trouble the girl, either. All the stresses and nagging aches of her mind had been quieted along with those of her body. She felt rejuvenated.

With outstretched hands she brushed the tips of the grasses, hummed a tune as she walked. Every so often Jaime would look over at her, and she'd catch his eye and smile. Once he took her arm as they negotiated a ditch, and as he let go his hand dropped and he entwined his fingers in hers for a few steps. It felt like little bubbles of happiness were released by his touch and popped straight into her bloodstream. She tried to get a grip on herself, tried to keep the dreamy look off her face, but it was difficult when her feet didn't even feel like they were touching the ground.

After a while, the sound of upcoming traffic broke into her reverie. Jaime, a little ahead of her, carrying the axe on one shoulder and the pack on the other, stopped at a grove of trees just before the cleared land fell away down a long slope to the highway. She stopped beside him, and they watched the stream of wagons, riders and pedestrians meandering both ways along the King's Road.

'It's busy,' he observed.

'Yeah. The direction we're going, it'll only get busier.'

They watched a squadron of blue and grey soldiers ride past, maybe thirty men in all. The armour of men and horses glinted in the sun, the bits and stirrups jingled, and their wolf banners whipped and snapped in the stiff breeze. Jaime's expression was pensive. The girl wondered what he was thinking, but then she was distracted by the way his long fringe lifted off his forehead in a wave and curved down to flatten against his neck in the wind. She had an almost uncontrollable urge to brush the thick locks with her fingers. Clean and in the bright daylight, she noticed for the first time that his hair was a dark blonde and shone like burnished gold.

Another patrol of North soldiers went along the road below them, this time almost twice the number.

'Lots of military,' he mused. 'No point even trying to cross over. We can stay on this side of the King's Road all the way to the Capital.'

The girl had to drag her eyes away from his face in order to collect her own thoughts. 'There's not as much cover close to the road, we'll have to go right around towards Maidenpool, then cut over to Duskendale. I know the trails but on foot, it could take us...' She started to add up the hours and days in her head. There were a lot.

'As long as you know how to get us there, girl. Once we pass Maidenpool we're almost out of the reach of Northmen. I don't mind if it takes a little longer.' Jaime turned from the disappearing soldiers to face her. 'Long trips don't worry me when I enjoy the company.'

The girl felt her heart surge with delight at his words, and then almost immediately deflate at the flip-side implication: the time she had with Jaime was limited. Once they reached KingsLanding, they would go their separate ways. He would be home, and her home was somewhere very far away.

She shook off the thought. _Why dwell on what has yet to pass?_ 'I'm glad you're enthusiastic about a long journey. I think it could run into weeks, and we're kind of short on supplies.'

_'_I don't care about supplies,' he said.

'The axe is our only weapon, we have no horse, the apples and bread won't last beyond today, and we only have one blanket. It looks as though the weather is changing and -'

'I don't care about blankets.'

She realised he was staring at her the way she'd stared at him before, as if trying to memorise every detail of her face. When his gaze dropped to her mouth, the girl totally forgot what she'd been going to say. She was drawn to him as if by a magnet, and closed her eyes as he curled one hand around the back of her neck.

'It's strange to feel this way about someone else,' he said, almost to himself, sounding genuinely mystified. 'I never thought I could.' He ran one hand through her hair to the ends, watching the strands fall from his fingers. It made her scalp tingle deliciously.

'Do you wish you didn't?' she heard herself asking.

He gave a slight shrug. 'There is no point wishing to feel one way or another. We can't help what we feel.'

'It's better than when we hated each other.'

'I never hated you, girl,' he disagreed. 'And you never hated me.'

'Not even when you strangled me with that chain?'

'No. I didn't do that because I hated you. I didn't know you then. You were just an obstacle to be overcome. A... nothing.'

'And what am I now?' she asked.

He tilted his head and regarded her with half-lidded eyes. 'Now, you are most definitely a something.' His fingers tugged on her hair and she obediently tipped her face up to be kissed. His lips and tongue fitted against hers so seamlessly it was as if they'd been made to fit together; as if the whole point of her mouth even existing was simply to kiss his. After a time that may have been a minute or an hour, she had no idea, he pulled himself away. 'A very, very distracting something,' he said in a low voice.

She moved away from him, breathless. _If we don't stop behaving like this, I'm going to have to add another few weeks to our journey_, she thought_. Not that I would mind. _

They retreated back from their view of the King's Road, and the girl led the way up to where she knew a track cut through the hills. They followed this until midday when they came to a depression in the ground under a rocky hillock just higher than their heads, sheltered from the wind. She suggested they stop and eat.

Jaime agreed, although he didn't look the slightest tired, despite having carried the heavy axe and pack for hours. On the contrary, since getting rid of his manacles he seemed possessed of a cocky confidence and easy swagger. While the ragged clothes and long hair were the same, his presence had definitely changed. The girl doubted she could have recognised him as the same man she'd first encountered sitting by the roadside. He was like a caged wild animal that had been released and now prowled free looking for something to sharpen its claws on.

_Or maybe it's me who's changed, _she thought. _Maybe I see him through different eyes._

They shared the apples. She watched him eat, watched him hold the water flask, thinking all the time of how well she knew his mouth, the touch of his hands. How he looked when he was naked, what sounds he made when he was at his most unguarded, when ecstasy overcame all else. It was a weird kind of intimacy, in that she felt she knew so much about him, but at the same time nothing.

'So are you ever going to tell me why you were being kept a prisoner?' she asked.

'Are you ever going to tell me your name?' He turned the questioning back on her, quite slickly, she thought. _He's good._

'If I do, will you tell me why you were being kept a prisoner?'

He grinned at her persistence. 'No.'

She threw her apple core at him, and he evaded it by falling backwards onto the ground. She lay back too, on the soft grass. Picked a stem, chewed on the juicy end.

'Your girl. What's she like?'

'You just don't know when to give up, do you?' he teased.

'I'm only curious.'

'Curiosity rarely leads to happiness. People always want to know things they'd be so much better off not knowing.'

'Humour me. Lie if you want,' she said. 'Not like I'm ever going to meet her.'

Jaime was quiet for a minute, as if thinking how best to respond. After a while he rolled onto his side and propped himself on one elbow. He studied the girl, and she wondered if in his head he was doing some kind of comparison. 'Well, she's blonde,' he finally said, and the girl figured he had been.

'Is that the only similarity?'

'She can also be a real pain in the arse.'

The girl laughed. 'Maybe that's just a woman-thing.'

'You could be right.' He thought some more, still staring at her as he did so. His stare was starting to make her feel hot and restless, although the sky was now overcast and the air chilled. Jaime went on: 'She's strong. Determined. But, she's complicated. Most people misunderstand her. That's only because they don't know her like I do.'

'She's lucky,' the girl said.

'Because she loves me?' Jaime smiled wryly. 'I'm not an easy person to love. I can't solve her problems, I go missing a lot. Loving me is a burden more than a good fortune.'

'I meant because you love her,' the girl replied. 'I hope she appreciates it.'

Little spits of rain began to swirl in the gusts. The girl sat up, grabbed their pack. 'I wish we still had the packs that were on Sooty. The waterproof tarp and spare furs. We're gonna get drenched.'

Jaime took the pack off her. 'We'll find shelter if it starts pouring. But this is just a shower.' He stood in front of her in the blustery wind, his skin shining from the droplets, hair tangling wildly. He grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet, close into him. Then he said quietly in her ear, 'We're being followed.'

The girl's heart skipped a beat. She didn't move her head, but flicked her eyes along the treeline over his shoulder. 'Kiss me,' he instructed.

She pressed her lips on his lightly. 'How do you know?'

'I heard them,' he murmured against her mouth. 'About half hour ago. I was sure I saw someone too, on the track behind us, but they were some way back and I wasn't sure. But while we've been here, there's been movement on top of that little hill, near the rocks. So now I'm sure. Don't look. Keep kissing me.'

She did as he told her, nerves prickling with apprehension . _Are we about to get ambushed? How could I miss being followed? I'm normally so careful. _ But she knew why. Because thinking about Jaime every second didn't leave room for thoughts of anything else. She berated herself for being so undisciplined. _What good is feeling blissful if that feeling gets us both killed?_

Jaime held her forearms and pulled back a little to look into her eyes. 'Stop doing that now or I can't concentrate' he said, with a smile. She wondered how he could look so relaxed with the possibility that arrows may hit them at any moment, but his eyes sparkled with a barely contained excitement. 'Alright this is what's going to happen. We're going to go over to that levee, underneath the rocks, together, as if we were going to... enjoy ourselves. I know it will be hard to pretend but, just do your best.' He smiled again, and the craziest thing was that she felt like smiling back. He continued, 'When we get directly underneath the rocks I'm going to turn you around and kiss the back of your neck. Then - we run, up the sides of the hill. You go right, I'll go left, and whoever's up there will be trapped.' He looked positively thrilled at the prospect. If he could have purred she was sure he would have.

She, in contrast, was silently freaking out. There was so much could go wrong with this scenario that she didn't even know where to start. Somehow, she allowed herself to be walked over towards the levee by Jaime, who played the ardent admirer convincingly the whole way; stroking her waist and nibbling her ear.

They stopped under the overhang of the hill, faced each other, the cluster of rocks blocking the spatter of rain. The air around them in the sheltered pocket was still. It was like the eye of the storm. _Whoever's up there has the perfect shot at us, _the girl thought, panic tightening her throat. _ Barely yards away, directly above us. Fucking hells. _

Jaime pressed her up against him, and she felt his hardness. _This is turning him on. Dear gods, the man has a death wish. _He turned her around, slowly, lifting her hair up with one hand. As every second ticked past she expected the hiss of an arrow and a steel barb to sink into her flesh. She felt cold air on the nape of her neck, and then the soft touch of his lips. 'Now,' he whispered.

She sprang away, the adrenaline spiking through her body giving her wings. She made it up the hill in about five strides, took a sharp turn behind the rocks, skidded on loose gravel and nearly fell over. She saw a man running, and Jaime from the other direction make a flying leap and tackle him to the ground. The girl ran over and jumped on the man's head, held tight until he stopped thrashing.

'Lie still,' Jaime growled. 'You're not going anywhere.' His voice was so authoritative that the girl wasn't surprised when the man almost immediately obliged. She got off his head now he wasn't struggling, keeping one of her knees on his back.

'Who are you and why are you following us?'

The man mumbled something into the dirt and Jaime nodded at the girl; she stepped off the man and withdrew the sword from the scabbard on his belt as she did so. Jaime stood, dragging the interloper up by the scruff of his jacket collar. Although nearly as tall as Jaime, the man was gangly and young. About her own age, the girl thought. Then she saw his face and realised she knew him.

'You're Callem. Cole's son, from the Hollow,' she said. 'I thought I recognised Cole's steel.' She lifted up the sword, which even at a cursory glance was extremely well-crafted.

The man flinched from her fearfully, his pale face imprinted with pebbles where he'd been pushed into the ground. He actually appeared terrified, which bemused her. _He knows me, and Jaime's not that scary, _she thought.

'Th-they're tracking you. Th-they sent me on ahead to report back when you stopped t-t-to rest,' Callem stuttered. He seemed keen to unburden himself. Jaime tightened his grip on the collar and the young man cringed. 'Please don't kill me!'

'I'm not going to kill you. Or rather, not immediately.' Jaime looked to be in his element, intimidation obviously being one of his fortes. 'So, you're the scout. Why didn't you go straight back and report that we were resting as soon as we stopped here?'

Callem looked so petrified he was beyond words. The girl wondered if he was about to piss himself. It made her want to giggle, the effect Jaime was having on this poor kid.

When there was no reply, Jaime clicked his teeth together, which the girl had to admit was rather a threatening sound. 'Were you hoping to watch us fuck? Is that why you hung around?'

'N-n-n-no,' Callem choked out. Tears glimmered in his eyes as Jaime twisted the material at his neck.

'No? That's a shame, you could have had a happy memory to take to the grave with you. You could have pictured this girl here,' Jaime gestured in her direction, 'moaning in pleasure, when the time comes for me to slit your throat with that sword she's holding.'

'Let him be,' the girl admonished. 'He's barely older than a kid. He doesn't know what he's doing.'

Jaime smiled at Callem, but this didn't have any sort of reassuring effect on the young man. He gasped for breath and wriggled like a fish on a hook, which made Jaime smile even wider before he said, 'Tell me how many others are following us, and exactly where they are.'

'T-t-t-twelve men, villagers from th-the Hollow. Brodrick is leading them. Th-the-they're hiding in the trees back down the t-t-t-track about half a mile.' Callem started crying, snot leaking from his nose and snail-trailing down his cheek.

'Have you seen us?' Jaime asked.

The young man's face was turning a puce colour, his eyes bulged in their sockets. He shook his head frantically.

Jaime considered him for a moment longer, then abruptly let him go. Callem staggered backwards and fell over. Jaime turned away. 'Get up. This girl here likes you for some reason, so thank her for saving your life. If you breathe a word to anyone of having seen either myself or this girl, ever, I will personally find you and kill you in a manner that will make you wish to every god you've ever heard of that you'd never been born. My family will find you if I can't.' Callem stumbled to his knees, retching and coughing desperately to get air.

'What are we doing?' the girl asked, sword in one hand, surprised that Jaime had actually released the boy.

'We're going to turn the tables on some villagers,' Jaime said matter-of-factly.

'Yeah... um. Are you fucking mad? He said there are _twelve _of them!'

'Twelve _villagers _ from _RedHollow_. Not twelve soldiers.'

The girl must've looked thoroughly unconvinced, because Jaime sighed, reached over and grabbed Callem's arm to help him to his feet. 'How did you find us, boy? Go on, tell her how you tracked us here.'

The boy coughed again, gagged. 'The-the-the- the horse.'

Jaime looked over at the girl to make sure she'd got that. 'Your horse. They have your horse, and they're using her to find us.'

The girl felt her heart stop completely, then start up again at a gallop in her chest. She gaped at Callem. 'Sooty? They have _Sooty? _But she would never go with anyone else...' she trailed off at the guilty look on the boy's face. Callem rubbed his neck and spat blood onto the ground, his tongue testing for loose teeth. 'Th-they have ch-ch-ch-chains,' he said.

There was a long silence. Rain slanted down, wind chased grey clouds across the sky.

The girl frowned, looked down at the sword in her hand thoughtfully. Suddenly she tossed it over the boy's head to Jaime, who caught it in his left hand. The clouds opened up, and sunlight shivered down the blade; Jaime spun it with a lazy flick of his wrist and the steel flashed.

'How do you go with a sword?' she asked.

Jaime shrugged. 'I go alright.'


	18. Swords

The drizzle spat in their faces as Jaime and the girl back-tracked through the trees. The further they went along their previous route, the more apprehensive the girl became. Her earlier euphoric mood had evaporated into the rapidly darkening sky, and low thunder grumbled. She clutched the long-handled axe to her chest. Their pack had been left behind, to be collected sometime later. _Or, not_ the girl thought. _In which case, to be found eventually by some wandering Tribesman, who may spare a passing thought as to who it once belonged to._

'You know he might go straight back and tell them,' she said, recalling how Callem had fled down the hill as if the Red God himself were on his heels.

'He might,' Jaime agreed, unconcerned. 'It matters little. Half a mile is not far.'

They jumped down a culvert, ducked under the sweeping leaves of a willow tree. White butterflies sheltering under it scattered into the air like confetti. The girl wiped grit from her eyes and shifted the axe to her shoulder, trying to think only of Sooty, of seeing Sooty again, and not of the dozen armed men who wanted to capture and probably kill them, who they were now deliberately seeking out.

'So, are you clear on what you're doing?' Jaime said, as they moved furtively in a crouch along a dry creek bed that bordered the track.

'Getting killed?' she replied, testily.

'Your humour is as always, refreshing,' Jaime said, grabbing her arm to pull her up the steep bank and into an area of thick bracken, 'but I do actually need to know that you understand what we're doing.'

'Oh what _we're_ doing?' she said, anxiety making her snippy, 'Well, while _I'm_ getting killed I guess you'll also be getting killed, only a little less quickly. That sword looks pretty good on you, so it's possible you may take out five or six similarly-sworded men before the seventh, eighth or ninth one manages to overpower you in a bloody melee -'

'Shh, girl,' Jaime clamped his hand on her mouth with unexpected force. He stopped so that he could slide his hand down and grip her chin, turning her face to his. 'There will be plenty of blood, but I assure you none of it will be ours. Now, I know you're scared. But answer me. What did I tell you to do once we reach these villagers?'

Along with the controlled urgency of his tone, the girl couldn't ignore the anticipation in it. She despaired of his attitude. _We're likely going to be captured or cut into little pieces and he's enjoying himself? I may be agreeing to do this, but at least I know it's madness._

'_What _did I _tell_ you?' Jaime repeated, giving her chin a little squeeze to get her attention. Unnerved by his baseless confidence, she repeated his instructions back to him. 'I'm hanging back until you distract them by... ' she gestured at the sword he held with such familiar ease by his side that it appeared to be an extension of his arm. '...by fighting. Until it's chaos. Then I go get Sooty.'

'Very good,' he nodded. 'Get your horse. That's all you need to do. I know you know some of these villagers, but remember they made their choices.'

'I just don't understand what you're going to be -'

'I'm going to be killing people,' Jaime cut her off. 'If that troubles you, you may wish to avert your eyes.' His own eyes simmered with a restless energy that was becoming increasingly familiar to the girl, as if he were alight from within. As if inside of him a flame was preparing to roar into an inferno as soon as he gave it enough oxygen. She wondered if he'd always been this foolhardy, and if so how it was that he still lived.

'You're one of those men, aren't you?' she said, narrowing her eyes. 'The kind who only feels alive when they're fighting or fucking.'

Jaime stifled a laugh and almost let her go. 'Very insightful, girl, you truly have a gift. I guess today is my lucky day.'

She jerked herself free of him. 'I'm sorry I lack your enthusiasm. But they have my horse, so let's do this.'

They hurried through the trees until they reached an area of open marshland, where the track had been built up with soil and sediment to cross over a shallow pond. Jaime dragged her down beside the muddy dam that had been created by this crossing. Further along, the track curved around behind a thicket of trees and out of sight.

'Why here?' she asked, squirming into the long reeds which grew thick around the murky dam. The wind blew the reeds flat one way and then the other, skittered over the water and howled back into the trees. The long grasses all around shook, and coldness from the damp earth seeped into her clothes.

'They won't expect an ambush on low ground, in the open. Most attacks are from hills or higher up, to give the attackers the advantage.'

'So what's our advantage?' she wanted to know.

He didn't answer, just kept looking along the track.

After around five minutes that felt like centuries, the girl could hear sounds gradually separate from the howling wind; multiple boots scraping on dirt, metal jingling, hoof-beats. It sounded like a small army. She scrunched lower into the reeds.

'Gods, we're going to die,' she muttered.

'Have faith, girl. We won't die today.'

She felt sick with nerves, the taste of apple and bile in her throat. 'You're completely fucking insane, aren't you? I'd almost look forward to proving you wrong if only it weren't going to be so painful.'

He held a finger to his lips. His eyes shone a light, bright green, blazing with certainty and excitement in equal measure. He looked lit up, inspired, ready to leap into the embrace of chaos and death as if they were old friends. Suddenly he leaned over and kissed her. She was too stunned to even respond.

'Trust me,' he whispered. Then he crept low over to the side of the track and sank down into the shadows, by the base of the little overpass.

The girl kept still, peering through the weeds and cattails. She couldn't see Jaime any more. The air on her wet clothes was cold, but she didn't feel it.

She heard the tramp of footsteps growing closer, metal clanking. She could see movement, a mass of bodies, coming around the corner of the track from behind the trees. A horse at the front with its head bent down being led by a long rope, another horse at the back with packs on, and between the two animals rows of men on foot, marching with a sense of purpose.

The horse in front had an awkward hobbling gait, its bent head bobbing with every stride due to the two chains that ran from each bit ring to down under its belly and around its hind legs, where leather straps on its fetlocks linked them. Raw skin glistened in patches along the horse's flanks where the metal had chafed, and dried sweat coated its fur like powder. Unable to lift its neck higher than its knees, the horse groaned as it breathed, and froth ran in long streams from its champing, gaping mouth. The girl almost didn't recognise Sooty, didn't want to recognise her, but Callem's words made it true.

'_They have chains_'. The girl gripped her axe tighter, fought back the impulse to charge immediately into the midst of the villagers and free her horse. She knew she had to wait. But every dragging, clanking hoof-beat closer was a stab to the heart_. How could they do this to you, Sooty? _Any sympathy she may have had for the villagers was gone, blown away by the cruel sight of Sooty's foaming mouth. Any nerves she'd had dissipated with it. All she felt was a cold determination settle in her guts. _You want to have my horse, you fuckers? Let's see how much you like having her once I cut her chains._

Now the group of men were clear of the trees. Now they were approaching the dam, their footsteps rhythmic and sure. Now they were crossing the overpass.

The girl bowed her head, stilled her mind. She heard a splash, and a thud, and the sharp smack of a blade as it sliced into flesh. _Jaime_. She heard the footsteps falter and disunite. She heard a villager yell out in alarm, a micro-second of silence, followed by the hissing of numerous swords being unsheathed simultaneously. The clash of steel on steel.

Chaos. Her cue. She pushed herself up out of the reeds and vaulted onto the track.

Men on all sides of her, running, their attention on Jaime. Jaime meeting them as they came at him, his sword a silver blur, overhand, underhand, upswing, backswing, striking so hard that sparks flew, but moving easily as if in a dance he'd practised every day. The men were drawn into his orbit and then flung out of it, sideways or backwards or face-down, blood bursting and splashing from perfectly timed slashes, their lives gushing out of them before they realised it was done.

The girl was momentarily awed but didn't let herself dwell on it. She turned and dodged between the men as they moved forward. A scream that sent needles down her spine, bodies colliding; she didn't look back. Zig-zagging around boots and hurdling legs, then she was at the front and there was Sooty's broad rump and dreadlocked tail. 'Sooty,' she said, and the horse rolled her eye back and whinnyed in reply.

The girl sensed a movement to her right and instinct threw her under Sooty's belly. She rolled, just as the man who was holding the lead-rope brought his mace down into the spot she'd vacated. Sooty's big hooves stamped on the ground, sending the lengths of chain attached to her fetlocks twisting and writhing like fat snakes.

The girl righted herself on the opposite side of her horse, used the momentum of the roll to swing the axe up. 'Hey girl, whoa girl,' she soothed, as Sooty began to desperately plunge and paw, making the chains impossible to see in the clouds of dust. The man with the lead-rope hauled back on it fiercely and Sooty fell to her knees; her nose snorting dirt.

The girl could sense someone else approaching from behind, but she didn't turn or allow herself the distraction. _If I am killed now then at least let Sooty be free,_ she prayed to gods she didn't believe in, as she brought the axe crashing down without any conscious aim. A blow struck her from behind on the shoulder and she was knocked sideways, the axe wrenched from her grasp.

She hit the side of the track on her stomach and couldn't breathe. In front of her she saw Sooty's white flecked mouth arc upwards as she tossed her head, the chains sweeping free in a long trail beneath her. _I did it, _the girl thought, relief flooding through her.

Sooty also realised she was free. The big horse heaved herself up off her knees and swung her now-unrestrained head around like a battering ram, collecting the man on the end of the lead-rope as he tried to turn, and sending him flying through the air with a grunt. Then on her hindquarters she spun around so fast, all the girl could see was an explosion of gravel. Hooves lashed out with startling speed and the man tumbled sideways, his arms cartwheeling.

Another man ran forward from where he'd been standing behind the girl, holding the club he'd used to strike her with. This time he brought it down between Sooty's ears, but Sooty lunged into the blow and it glanced off her thick chest. The club flipped into space and the man was sucked under Sooty's bulk like an undertow, his body squelching sickeningly under her hooves.

The girl crawled over to the edge of the track. She couldn't see her axe anywhere and the club was lost in the frenzy of Sooty's trampling. Everywhere was haze and dust and people falling and shouting. Sooty squealed and kicked out and someone's head tipped backwards with a crack. The girl climbed to her feet, pain shooting through her shoulder as she moved.

She whistled and Sooty was by her side, jigging and stomping. The loose chains running from her bridle and hind legs slithered like tentacles in the dirt.

The girl scrambled up onto the horse's back and wound her fingers into her mane as Sooty reared again. Incredibly, the only men around them were sprawled at improbable angles, dark splotches and bloody hoof prints littering their bodies and the ground. The other packhorse stood uncertainly in their midst, unsure exactly what it should be doing.

From atop Sooty's back the girl could see further down the path to where Jaime and three men were still standing. Even as she clicked Sooty forward, Jaime stepped to one side to avoid a parry, then slashed his own sword down faster than the girl's eyes could follow. His opponent buckled at the waist like a puppet with the strings cut, and even before this man had hit the ground Jaime had already pivoted and thrust again, skewering the second man through the base of his neck. Jaime's blade withdrew smoothly and the man froze in mid-stride, before falling slowly through the dust, an imprint of him seeming to hang as an after-image in the disturbed air.

The third and last man had already lost his sword but bravely scooped up a dropped weapon and attacked. Jaime deflected his strike as if they'd rehearsed it beforehand, and with a casual flick of his sword sliced the man's leg from groin to calf. The wound yawned open, steam rose from it into the air. The man gasped and went down on one knee, still holding his weapon, a machete. He strained to stand up, but his leg failed and he leant on the weapon to keep from toppling sideways.

Jaime sauntered over, appearing eerily untouched despite the carnage around him. He reached across and knocked the machete away.

The man fell onto one hand. His breath was laboured and when he looked down he seemed amazed at the amount of blood already slick on the ground as his femoral artery pumped it out. He sat back heavily, legs outstretched, the circle of red widening around him until he looked to be sitting on a shiny crimson cloak.

The girl rode Sooty up to Jaime and the man. She saw now that the man was Brodrick, the one who had given Jaime so much attention that evening near RedHollow. Jaime stood and watched him bleeding out, without expression. Sooty stopped beside him. For a while, the only sound was Brodrick's ragged breathing and the trickling of his life running out onto the sand.

Finally, he lifted his head and looked up at the girl. 'What are you doing, Delivery Girl?' he croaked. 'I wouldn't have thought it of anyone, but 'specially not you.'

Jaime stepped forward. 'Silence!'

'Why do you care?' the girl answered, ignoring Jaime and addressing Brodrick. 'You're not a soldier anymore, you should have let us be. If I choose to aid a prisoner to escape, then that's my business.'

'You're betraying the whole of the North with your actions! Lord Robb Stark would have -'

Jaime opened his mouth to speak, but the girl got in first. 'What do I care of the North? Or Lord Stark? What have they ever done for me and my family? I have looked after my family, I owe no-one loyalty.' When Brodrick didn't immediately respond, she went on, angry: 'Twelve villagers, who knew me and my family... to recapture this one prisoner? For what? Some misplaced sense of honour towards a Lord who wouldn't even know your fucking name if you died for him?'

Brodrick laughed then, softly, his chest shaking, leaning on his arms which were now wrist-deep in his own blood. 'You have no idea, do you, girl? Dear gods, you really have no idea.'

'I said, _silence!_' Jaime ordered, lifting his sword and pressing the tip of it into Brodrick's cheek.

'Leave him!' the girl cried out, but Jaime pressed the steel deeper.

The girl slid down off Sooty and grabbed his arm. _'Leave him!'_

Jaime's arm tensed. Brodrick, his face now so white that he looked like a ghost, kept his eyes fixed on the girl. His voice was mocking. 'Oh the irony. Your brother tried to kill the boy who is King, and now... _this? _You must really hate Kings, Delivery Girl.' He laughed again, weakly. 'Seeing as you have such a thing for King -'

With one swift movement Jaime's blade ran through Brodrick's cheek and out the back of his skull. The girl dragged at his arm but to no effect, and as he yanked his sword out, Brodrick's last words bubbled out through the hole in his face. The ex-soldier slumped face down, and slowly keeled over.

'He was dead already, it was a mercy,' Jaime said.

The girl shoved at him, hard. 'He wasn't dead, he was _talking to me!'_

'He said your brother tried to kill the King, I presumed you'd want him dead.'

'You presumed wrong!' she glared. 'What did he mean, that I must really hate Kings?'

Jaime wiped his sword on Brodrick's coat. 'He was merely trying to provoke you. Last words never have the great significance people think they do.'

The girl didn't answer him, just stared at Brodrick's fallen body as the rain fell harder, in a torrent, diluting the pool of blood and washing it away in pink ribbons around her feet.

* * *

**Author's note: this chapter is dedicated to all my reviewers, who are not only entertaining but inspiring. I was inspired to write another looong chapter so thank you ;)**


	19. Rain

The rain came down in sheets. The girl wandered between the bodies, stepping over outstretched hands, avoiding the streams of bloody water winding in every direction across the track and out into the dam. No-one but her, Jaime and the horses stirred. She knew she should be checking for weapons, coins, anything that may be of use, as Jaime had told her, but she felt incapable of doing so. She just walked, her mind blank.

She stood in the middle of the bodies and counted them. _It's like when my father slaughtered pigs, _she thought,_ but he never slaughtered this many pigs at once_. She was thankful that most of them were lying face-down and she didn't have to recognise them.

Jaime was going through the saddlebags on the packhorse, then he mounted it and rode over to where Sooty stood on the side of the track. The packhorse reached its nose over to sniff Sooty's, and she snorted softly before turning her head away.

The girl came across a man lying curled sideways with an arm across his face, as if he were just resting. She nudged him with her toe, and he rolled limply onto his back. His open eyes filled with water as the rain poured down.

_The poacher_, she thought. _I was talking to you only days ago. What made you come after us? Who will support your children now? _She stared at his grey face, trying to make sense of a world that seemed to have become incomprehensible.

'Take his coat,' Jaime said, riding up behind her. When she did nothing, he jumped down and went over to the poacher, pulled the heavy oilskin jacket off the stiffening limbs. It matched the one he was now also wearing, long and black. Jaime handed it to the girl. 'Put this on,' he insisted. 'You're soaked.'

The girl hadn't noticed, but when she went to push her arms through the too-big sleeves, she saw that she was shaking all over. Water dripped off the end of her nose and her clothes were plastered to her skin. Her shoulder sent spikes of agony whenever she moved.

Jaime came over to stand in front of her. He pulled the sides of the coat closed, fastened them; fixed the hood so it covered her head. She felt like a toddler being dressed by a parent. It was just really difficult to get her body to co-operate.

'We have to go,' Jaime said. 'We don't have long before... this is discovered. It's out of the way here, in the hills, but these will start to smell soon. We need a decent head start.'

'I figured you as a soldier,' the girl said in a flat voice. 'But this is... ' she looked around at the dead scattered haphazardly across the track, lost for words. An icy wind whipped through the marsh. 'I don't know what this is.'

'Your horse killed half of them,' Jaime dismissed. As if it were nothing.

_Sooty only killed three. Why try to minimise what you just did? _she thought. Said out loud: 'I've never seen anyone fight like that. Ever.'

Jaime looked impatient. 'How many soldiers have you seen fighting, girl? Not many, I'd wager. These men were just villagers, untrained. They were foolish to come after us. Any soldier could have done the same.'

_No they couldn't. Not like that. Not with every strike hitting exactly where it should; not without being so much as touched by an opponent's blade, But, nice try._

She decided to keep her thoughts to herself until she could make better sense of them. 'Was Callem... here?' she asked instead.

Jaime shook his head.

The girl felt a small rush of relief. 'I guess he didn't tell them. I guess he listened to you.' She was glad, for at least that one small thing.

'Or else he decided to go tell someone else,' Jaime said, ominously. 'Now, let's leave. Or am I going to have to carry you?' He swung back up onto the packhorse in an easy movement, gathered the lead-rope in one hand. The horse pirouetted and tossed its mane. Somehow simply by having Jaime astride of it; balanced perfectly as if born in the saddle, the packhorse had transformed from a humble beast of burden into a spirited destrier._ Just another thing he's apparently incredibly talented at, _the girl thought. It wouldn't have surprised her at that moment if Jaime had grown wings and flown away.

_We're alive, against all the odds. We have horses, I have Sooty, and weapons, food, a tent. I should be celebrating. Why then do I feel so... nothing?_

She turned from the sight of him and walked back over to Sooty, who lifted her head at her approach. The horse's flanks heaved and her eyes were dull. The girl stroked her neck, murmured calming words. She hooked the bridle from behind the horse's ears and gently slid it off. The bit came out of Sooty's mouth slimy with blood where the pressure of the chains had cut into her lips. The girl dropped the leather to the ground, then ran her hands over the many cuts and contusions all over the horse's body. The chest wound from the club was starting to swell and felt warmer than the rest of her.

The girl knelt and unstrapped the restraints from Sooty's hind fetlocks. Her hooves were stained red and there was a spray of blood all up the inside of her legs.

The girl wrapped the lead-rope around the horse's neck and tied it in a knot, jumped onto her back. They walked first to the dam, where Sooty lowered her head and immediately began to suck in water in huge gulps.

_I don't think you've had anything to drink since they got you, _the girl thought.

'Don't let her drink too much,' Jaime warned, riding up beside them. 'It's not good for horses to drink a lot when they're hot, and -' he gestured towards the overpass. The girl looked to where he'd pointed, and saw the run-off from the rain cascading down from the blood-soaked track into the dam. Little red strands and globs slipped through the pinkish waterfall. The girl, nauseated, pulled up Sooty's head and turned her away.

They kicked the horses into a canter and rode off through the rain.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

An early darkness fell with the storm. Thunder cracked and boomed and the trees appeared again and again out of the night in the flares of lightning. They rode further into the bush for another few hours, until the girl thought they must be on the outskirts of Maidenpool. Rain fell in a veil from the hood of her coat. Sooty began to stumble. As they reached the base of a steep ridge the girl reined in. 'We have to stop and rest,' she called out.

Jaime wheeled his horse around, looked behind them. He seemed to be listening for something, through the patter of the rain. 'Just a little further,' he urged. 'Another hour or so.'

'Sooty can't go on... she needs to rest.' The girl had already dismounted and began to run her hands over the horse again. All around her the night was black without dimension, but she concentrated on Sooty's warm fur, feeling for increasing heat or lumps. Sooty's breathing was strained.

Jaime dismounted too, came over. 'What's wrong with her?'

'Nothing's wrong with her,' the girl snapped. 'She's just tired.'

Jaime must have known better than to argue, and he helped take the horses over to the ridge and unpack a thick tarpaulin. They set it up against the cliff-face to make a sheltered area, weighed down the edges with stones, then dragged up some dead branches and lit a fire. The wet wood hissed and smoke drifted in slow coils. Jaime stripped off his sodden outer clothes and wrung them out. In the glow of the flames his skin shimmered as the muscles beneath flexed, his wet hair shone. He looked perfect, like a sculpted deity come to life. _ Like the lives of those men he took have made him more alive, _the girl thought, although she knew that was insane even as she thought it.

She dipped a cloth into boiled water and cleaned Sooty's abrasions. The swelling on the horse's chest was the size of her hand, burning hot. There was little blood, but she could feel a thumping pulse through the skin. She smeared ointment on the area and applied a dressing.

Sooty's head drooped, she barely reacted to the girl's ministrations. Her eyes were filmy. Beside them, the packhorse grazed on the long grass, but Sooty showed no interest. The girl tipped fresh water from the flasks into a pot and dipped Sooty's muzzle in it, but the horse turned her head away.

'It's alright girl, never mind,' the girl said, rubbing Sooty's neck. 'You don't have to eat and drink tonight, you can just rest. It's going to be alright, now. Everything's going to be fine.' She didn't know who she was trying to reassure more, her horse or herself. Sooty snorted and sighed deeply.

Jaime came up beside them, dressed in a clean top he must have found in one of the packs. 'I cooked some food,' he said. 'Come and eat something.'

'I've never seen her this tired before,' the girl said. 'I think I need to go into Maidenpool tomorrow, buy some tonic. There's a woman there I know, she has healing things -'

'Tomorrow,' agreed Jaime. 'Now, come and eat, and get out of those clothes before you freeze. Your horse will manage for a while without you.'

The girl packed up her medical things and followed Jaime back to the fire. She sat on the dry ground under the ridge, inside the shelter, hands between her knees. The fire was warm and steam rose from her wet clothes, but she felt cold all the way through, like she would never thaw out even if she sat there for a thousand years. Jaime handed her a bowl of food and she ate from it, tasting nothing.

'Are you hurt?' Jaime asked.

She moved her shoulder slightly. Pain throbbed inside, and she knew the next morning she'd barely be able to move it. 'Not bad. Just a bruise,' she said.

'I'm sorry about...' Jaime looked away, ran his hand through his hair. 'Those villagers. But you have to remember, it was us or them.'

'I know,' she said. She still didn't look at him.

'They would have killed you, you know. If they'd caught us. I'm the one they wanted, you were expendable.'

'I know.'

There was a long silence. Finally Jaime sighed. 'If you hate me because I saved your life... then so be it.'

'I don't...' She didn't know what she felt. She couldn't decide if it was nothing at all, or so many conflicting emotions that it was impossible for any one of them to affect her.

Jaime picked up another log and put it on the fire. Sparks rose and fluttered. 'Have you ever killed someone, girl?'

'Sooty has... trampled people. Other times.'

'I don't mean your horse. I mean _you,_' he said. _ '_Have you ever killed a person?'

'I've seen people killed before. I'm fine with it.' The girl stared into the fire, at the shapes of tree limbs gleaming incandescent orange in the coals.

Jaime stood up and walked over to her, took the still half-full bowl out of her hands. He put it on the ground and lifted her up into his arms. She didn't resist when he peeled off her soaked clothes. She was shivering uncontrollably and he wrapped her in a blanket. Then he led her over to the sleeping furs and lay her down.

He kissed her on her neck, her breasts, down her body. His hands were warm and sure and she responded to the rising feelings he woke in her. She wanted to be mindless again, to not think, only feel; to lose herself in sensation. He lifted her legs and spread her open, pushed up into her as if he owned her. She shuddered and gasped at the pure pleasure of it. Jaime's eyes burned as he moved on top of her. But when she closed her eyes, she saw again the sword going into Brodrick's cheek, the blood spilling out. She saw the same light in Jaime's eyes then, and knew that he'd felt the same way killing Brodrick as he was feeling now.

Outside, a brief rattle of hail on the tarpaulin, and then the slow drumming rain.


	20. Door

The warm light of the fire flickered over Jaime and the girl as they rested in that peaceful state of sleepy wakefulness, where bodies are spent but minds still wander. Gusts of wind shook the shelter, the rain hummed, and drops ran along the overhang of rock and plopped from the corner to the ground in little splashes.

The girl's head was on Jaime's chest, and the sound of his slowing heartbeat was comforting and strangely familiar. At one time, she thought, before conscious memory, she must have been an infant held close and carried in her mother's arms, and known that everything was as it should be in the world. It must have felt exactly like this, because the girl recognised it as if from a long ago dream; a dream she'd forgotten but had somehow spent her whole waking life searching for since.

Jaime laid his arm across hers, rubbed his thumb along her wrist. He twined his fingers with her fingers. The girl liked the feel of his calloused palm and the way their hands looked linked together; hers small and brown, his paler and broad, the knuckles scabbed and veins running blue under the skin. She thought that if they stayed this way forever she wouldn't mind.

She'd been solitary for such a long time, most of her life, with only fleeting acquaintances and Sooty for company. Having another person's arms around her at night was so different and yet, perfect. She wondered how she'd lived without it until now and not known it was missing. She realised she had been content with her life in the same way that someone who'd lived only in a dark room is content; until the day a door they didn't even know existed opened. Even if it opened just to give them a brief glimpse outside before slamming shut forever, they could never go back to being content in the room.

'Your skin is so soft,' Jaime said, 'and very tanned.' He stretched his forearm alongside hers to emphasise the contrast in their colouring.

'I'm in the sun a lot,' she said.

'Mmm.' Jaime drew circles on her skin with his fingers. 'And your hair is fair. It's uncommon.'

'Uncommon how?'

'Just an unusual combination,' he observed.

The fire crackled and the trees out in the night shook and sighed. The girl could hear the breathing of the horses nearby, and the scrape of their hooves on the rock.

'My mother was dark and my father was fair. I guess that's why,' she said. It was not something she'd ever thought about. Her skin and its qualities had not been of enough interest to anyone before to comment on. 'My sister and brother were both fair.'

'And did they also inherit your horse skills?' Jaime asked.

'That's from my mother. My father wasn't interested in horses. Beyond making sausages out of the broken down ones.'

'Most village horses are not worth much more than sausage-meat.'

'_Hey,' _ she protested with a grin._ '_Sooty is a village horse.'

'Present company excepted, of course.'

'Village horses can be as good as any horse. You just have to train them right.'

'Is that so?' Jaime mocked her, but kindly. 'And how many war-horses, purpose bred for battle, have you ridden, girl?'

'Not as many as you, it seems. And your point is?'

'My point is that training can only do so much. You can't compare a war-horse, the superior conformation and proven bloodlines with a... a village nag. No matter what training you give it, it will never match up. Apologies to our mutual friend over there, but that's the truth.'

'Horses are horses,' the girl insisted. 'They don't know their pedigrees.'

'Well, we shall have to agree to disagree.'

'My mother said that a good horse was one you could rely on in a tight spot, who would run towards a fight and not away from one. She said looks don't matter, in a fight.'

'Did your mother know a lot about fighting on horseback, then? Growing up in a village and married to the local butcher?' Jaime teased. 'I can only begin to imagine her wealth of horse and battle-related knowledge.'

'_Actually_,' the girl jabbed him in the ribs in rebuke, 'my mother didn't stay long in the village. She didn't... it didn't suit her. She left when I was young and we lived with the HillTribes up until when she died. And before the village, she came from somewhere far away, on a ship, when she was less an age than I am now. Where she came from, her people knew more about horses than any _pampered_, _privileged_ Knight or Nobleman in Westeros.'

'Your family history just gets more and more intriguing,' Jaime's arm curled around her waist. 'So, let me get this right. Your father was the village butcher and your mother was a foreigner from across the sea, who left the boring village life after you were born to live wild among the HillTribes? Your early influences must have been... varied.'

'You say 'varied' like it's akin to being raised by wolves. My background may not be what you consider ideal, but to me it was normal.'

'I guess I'm surprised,' Jaime admitted. 'Surprised at myself, mainly. I wouldn't have thought it was possible for me to feel a... a connection, to you at all. Given our widely differing backgrounds.'

'I don't know your background so I'll have to take your word for it that they are 'widely differing.''

'Let's just say, the HillTribes did not feature prominently in my upbringing.'

'You really missed out,' she quipped.

'Apparently so,' he agreed dryly. 'I'm sure it would have been excellent though, to learn how to live without soap, table manners or civilisation.'

'Yeah. It's a miracle I even walk upright,' the girl retorted. 'And I'm sure with all your first-hand experience of living with the Tribes you'd know what you're talking about.'

She felt Jaime let out a little puff of air behind her and knew he was smiling. 'I concede my opinions of HillTribes are based on limited first-hand knowledge. Like your, rather scathing, opinions of Knights and Noblemen. Unless you fitted in a few years in a castle between everything else?'

The girl snorted. 'I don't need first-hand knowledge to know what it would be like to grow up in a castle, do I? Having servants to wipe my arse, and cutting off people's heads if they looked at me funny. Having a fucking army to boss around. How hard could it be? Piece of piss.'

There was a short silence.

'Maybe,' Jaime said. 'I wouldn't know.'

'Anyway. Why are you interested in my background all of a sudden? Are we getting married?'

They both laughed.

'Well, you know, it would be useful to know how many goats your Chief requires for the wedding,' Jaime said. 'No, girl. I'm just... curious about you.'

'Let's talk about _your_ background,' she suggested, with a mischievous smile.

Jaime buried his face in her neck. 'Let's... _not.'_

'I'll make it simple for you. You can just answer yes or no. Did _you_ grow up in a castle?'

Jaime groaned. 'I'm not playing this game.'

'Were you the ward, or bastard son, of some Nobleman?'

'No.'

'See, it's easy! You can do it. Are you really, really, staggeringly rich?'

Jaime sighed. 'This wasn't part of our original deal.'

'When I agreed to the original deal, I wasn't aware it was going to be so complicated. Or, life-threatening.'

Jaime propped himself up on one arm and adjusted the blanket over them where it had slipped down. 'Did you think the 500 gold coins were just to put up with my jokes?'

'I think I deserve more of an explanation,' the girl said, serious now. She forced her thoughts back to the villagers, drenched in blood. _ How easy it is to be distracted from uncomfortable thoughts when Jaime is beside me._ 'I wish I'd known from the start what this would involve.'

'Why?' Jaime shifted one leg across hers and leant over her, keeping his weight on his elbows. 'Would you have said no?'

'If I'd known everything that would happen? I... I think I might have...' It was disconcerting having Jaime on top of her. His eyes reflected the fire.

'Might have... what? Said no to everything that has happened?' Jaime asked, in a husky voice. He planted a kiss on her collarbone, one on the top of each of her breasts. His fingers smoothed strands of hair back from her face and sank into the back of her head, digging in gently. 'Said no to all the... _experiences_ we've had?' He kissed the side of her mouth, lightly, his lips barely grazing her skin. Nuzzled at her neck.

'Your experiences are not that... _ahh... _irresistible,' the girl gasped, trying to remain indifferent, but failing utterly.

Jaime smiled. His knee moved between her legs, nudged them apart. Both hands cupped the back of her head and his thumbs held her jaw so she couldn't turn her head away. 'Interesting,' he said. 'Because you've been so very _resisting. _Of such... experiences.' He moved his body so that he was now positioned fully between her legs. His tongue licked along the contours of her mouth, then his lips pressed firmly against hers and demanded entry as his body did the same.

The girl arched her back, reflexively. She knew soon he was going to be inside of her again, and she was going to moan, and shudder, and lose herself completely to him. She was going to shatter into thousands of pieces of herself and come together in a new way, wholly aware of what had been missing in her life before she met him. And Jaime would have proven his point. She wouldn't say no to him, about anything. Even if it meant risking her life. Even if what she had with him was just a brief glimpse through a door that was already closing.


	21. Maegi

The morning dawned grey, the sun an occasional glimpse behind the clouds. The girl woke with a restless energy and a premonition, the feeling that things had changed. _Today is different, somehow, _she thought. All around her the land gleamed, washed clean by the rain. _Is this a new start for me? _

She felt excited but anxious, and flipped back the blanket. Jaime's leg was hooked over hers, and she eased out from under his weight. Her shoulder was stiff, and she winced as she got to her feet. She pulled on her clothes that dried by the fire as quickly as she could; they were still damp and smelled of burnt food. The packhorse grazed in front of her, but she couldn't see Sooty. Her anxiety flared.

Behind her, Jaime stirred, yawned. 'Are you making tea?' he asked, rolling over.

'No,' she said.

She went out into the wet grass, hurried around the corner of the ridge. Straight away she could see Sooty lying down. The horse's curved ribcage rose above the sea of grass like the hull of an upturned boat. _Horses lie down sometimes, it doesn't mean anything's wrong_, the girl thought as she ran over, but she already knew that it was.

She could see Sooty's belly moving up and down with each breath, but when the girl knelt down beside her it was obvious Sooty couldn't get up. The earth around her hooves was muddy from her struggles to stand, and she made little grunts in her throat. The girl felt the horse's body carefully all over, but none of the wounds seemed to have worsened from last night, although the dressing on her chest was seeping. The girl put her ear to Sooty's belly and listened for the usual gurgles and swishes that meant the horse's insides were working normally. She couldn't hear anything. _That's bad._

She sat on the grass and lifted the horse's big head to rest it in her lap. She stroked the bones of the long nose, brushed away the flies that gathered in the corners of her eyes. Sooty blinked and snorted. Groaned softly.

'I'm going to get help for you,' the girl whispered. 'But I need you to hang in there. Don't you give up on me now.' She cradled Sooty's head and rested her cheek on the horse's cheek. She didn't want to leave her even for a minute, because if Sooty's life was over then surely she should be here with her at the end. But then she decided not to think like that and got up, placing Sooty's head gently back on the ground. 'I'll be as fast as I can,' she promised.

She sprinted back around the corner of the ridge to the shelter, nearly colliding with Jaime, who was dressed and leading the packhorse. The girl ignored him and ran to the packs that were on the rocks, near the now extinguished fire, waiting to be loaded. She started going through them, loosening cords and pulling things out.

'Were there coins, in the packs? Did the villagers have any coins?' she asked, urgently.

'Why?' Jaime said. When the girl didn't reply but just kept scrabbling through the packs, he said, 'Where's Sooty?'

'Sooty's not good.'

Jaime let out a long breath. The girl didn't look at his face but she knew the expression that would be on it.

'We can't stay here -' Jaime began, but the girl cut him off: 'Where are the _fucking coins?'_

Jaime unbuckled a satchel he had slung around his shoulder, and pulled out a pouch. Tossed it to her. She snatched it out of the air and went to push past him, but he caught her arm. 'What are you doing?'

'I'm going to Maidenpool, to buy stuff for Sooty. Medicines. I think it's her... I think she has colic. Or something, from not eating, or not drinking, or drinking contaminated water or... ' the girl shrugged Jaime's hand off. 'I won't be more than an hour.'

'We don't have an hour,' Jaime said. 'There are people following us and even with the rain washing away our tracks it won't take them long to -'

'Why do you care, you can just kill them all again,' the girl snapped. 'You're good at that.'

'These people might not be villagers. They might be soldiers,' Jaime countered. 'You need to stay with me. I can't protect you if you're away from me.'

'Then come with me.'

Jaime shook his head, impatient. 'This is a bad decision, girl. You need to use your logic and not your emotions.'

'I'm not going anywhere without Sooty,' she said stubbornly.

'Fuck!' Jaime raised his hands and looked at the sky in frustration. 'She's _a horse_. I know you... consider her to be a friend, and... I know you love her, alright? But she's a godsdamned _horse. _There are _thousands _of horses -'

The girl turned from him and ran , before he could physically stop her, down the slope to the trees, refusing to listen to another word.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Maidenpool was not far. A small creek bordered the wall around the town and a cobbled lane wound through it. The thatched roofs of the houses clustered around a central market place, but the girl didn't want to go into town today. She kept to the outskirts and circled the municipality, around the vegetable plots and orchards, the freshly turned earth steaming in the sun. It was still early enough in the day for most of the residents to be sleeping.

She saw one fisherman mending his skip, but he didn't see her. She paced herself so as not to tire too quickly, but she'd always been a good runner. By the time she reached the hut she was looking for she estimated that less than half an hour had gone by.

The hut was set back from any nearby houses, surrounded by tall trees that cast a permanent shadow, with a thin dirt footpath leading to the only door. There was a low fence surrounding a garden that seemed at first sight, impenetrable. Brambles and thistles clutched at the girl's clothes as she passed, and behind the overgrown shrubs, strange flowers grew in pots. Plants from lands the girl had never been to were hidden under common weeds. From cages and hanging baskets draped with cloth, or encased in sheets of metal to shield their contents from prying eyes, things chirped and whined.

The air in the garden was thick with smells, some bitter, some sweet, but all completely foreign. The girl had been here before, though, and didn't allow herself to be distracted. She knew that if there was anyone, anywhere, in all the places she'd been to, in all the years she'd travelled around Westeros, who could help Sooty... this was surely the person.

She reached the front door but turned right without knocking. Another, narrower, path ran under a small barred window and on around the side of the hut. She followed it, ducking gingerly to protect her sore shoulder, under the almost-invisible, gossamer wire strung with hundreds of tiny gold bells. They tinkled in unison. By the time the girl had reached the trapdoor behind the hut's fallen-down porch, unseen beneath a carpet of vines and moss, it had already propped open.

'Maeg? It's me, Ivezh's daughter,' the girl said. She crouched down so the person on the other side of the black slit could see her face. The door lifted, and smoke the colour of a bruise gusted into the air. It smelled like cinnamon, and metal.

'Come in, girl. Daughter of Ivezh, my blood sister, ' the woman on the steps said. Her voice was soft and musical, and she spoke as if she were singing each sentence. Then she turned and descended the steps, back into the smoky interior of the underground room. The girl went down the steps behind her, pulling the door closed above their heads.

The steps were more than she'd remembered, or maybe Maegi had lowered the floor. It seemed to take minutes to reach the bottom. The girl stepped into the wide circular space, with smooth featureless walls rising to the height of the steps, the ceiling fading into the darkness and a thick layer of purplish smoke hovering overhead. Around the walls were pots on stands over little fires, and shelves cluttered with objects.

'You need help,' Maegi said, as if someone had already told her. As if she'd been expecting the girl's visit. She stood in the centre of the room, her hands clasped together, the brown fingers protruding from the wide sleeves of her robe as spindly as bird's feet. 'I will help you if I can. You are my blood-sister's child, that makes you mine too.'

'Thank you, but I have coins to pay. You know I don't believe in that blood-relations thing, Maeg,' the girl said, frowning. 'Coming over on the same ship doesn't make you sisters. Just... good friends.' She didn't want Maeg to think she was somehow responsible for her well-being. She hadn't been to this place for years, and didn't really plan on coming back again any time soon.

A memory surfaced then, of how coming here with her mother had terrified her once. She couldn't remember exactly why, now. The place seemed harmless, just very hazy.

'Whether you believe or not makes no difference,' Maegi said, in her musical voice. 'Your mother and I were united by slavery, the horse girl and the girl from the Shadowlands. Men thought to buy and sell us like livestock, to use our bodies, but we swore to be free. We made a pledge. That is why we are sisters. With no family, we make our own family.'

'Yeah, yeah, I know Maeg, I get it. You had a bond.' The girl had heard it before and wasn't interested. She coughed in the smoke, which seemed to have coated her mouth in a tacky film. _Whatever is being cooked in those pots is potent. She should put in a fucking chimney. _'I do need your help, though. I need some medicine for my horse, who is very sick. She... she can't stand up and her belly is... there's no sounds in there, I think - I -'

'Hush, girl,' the older woman said. Suddenly she was standing next to her, holding one of the girl's hands in her own. The girl blinked. She hadn't seen Maegi take a step, or move her hands. _The smoke in here really plays tricks_, she thought. Maegi's skin felt soft and brittle, like very old parchment. 'Your horse. She ails. She is poisoned?'

'I think she has colic.'

'A stomach poison, from bad water.' The woman nodded and stared into the girl's face. Her eyes were black. Cold radiated up the girl's hands, up her arms and into her sore shoulder, down her spine. There were so many fires burning in the room that it should have been warm, but it was freezing.

'Do you have medicine for her?' the girl asked, wanting to be gone.

'Yes, my child,' Maegi said. 'Come.' She led the girl to the shelves along the wall, where the room curved around the steps. From here, the girl could see that the space continued on into the dark, like a tunnel. She turned to look at the shelves beside her, fascinated by the strange things crowded along them.

At eye-level, a yellowish spiralling bone jabbed out of a red velvet frame. It was about as long as her arm, wider at the base and narrowing to a tip. The girl paused, then looked at the next object, a flattened scaly skin that might have belonged to a lizard. She reached her hand out but Maeg stopped her.

'Don't touch what you don't know,' the older woman said. 'These things are not what they seem.' She was holding an opaque bottle in one hand with a long tube coming out of it.

'Is that the medicine?' the girl asked. She was distracted by a thin open case on a shelf above her head. A silver arrow of impeccable quality nestled amongst some kind of pale straw, which glowed in the dimness_. I miss my bow and arrow. I would buy another, _the girl thought. 'Are you selling this stuff?' she asked, pointing. 'Does that come with a bow?'

Maegi smiled. 'The arrow of misfortune fits any bow. Longbow, short recurved bow, double bow, it can even be the bolt for a crossbow. But you are better off keeping your eyes on the unicorn horn and the basilisk shed. They will only cause you temporary pain.'

'Is it poisoned?' the girl wanted to know. Her eyes kept straying back to the silver of the arrow's shaft, the faint light from the straw surrounding it pulsing like a beacon. Drawing her in. _It's so well made. Faultless._

'The arrow is soaked in a poison, or what you may call a poison if you didn't know of such things. Black lotus root, blind bloodfly paste, manticore venom, and other... things.' Maegi smiled and fluttered one hand. 'It will strike in the heart of any on whom it is fired, for the barbed head seeks out the life of its target and the shaft will turn in flight. You can never miss, with this arrow.'

'Amazing,' the girl said, impressed. 'What's the stuff it's in? That shining stuff?'

'Ghostgrass. It absorbs the curse so that the case is safe to touch.'

'What curse? I thought you said it was poisoned.'

'It is, both. Or neither.' Maegi shrugged as if descriptions were meaningless. 'Whoever touches the arrow itself will take enough of the... _poison _into their blood that they will suffer a terrible misfortune in...' she flapped her hand vaguely again, 'a week, ten days, two weeks. A fall, drowning, in their sleep, a sickness, murdered, executed.' She smiled. 'But, they will die.'

'Oh.' The girl was disappointed. She'd been rather keen on the arrow that never-missed. _This is why I hate magic. Too complicated, and always a hidden catch._ She took the vial of medicine from Maegi instead, and swirled it round. 'Will this make my horse better?'

'Yes. The tube goes into one nostril, down to the stomach. Then lift the animal's head and tip the contents, all at once.'

'Thank you. And... one more thing.' The girl blushed a little as she asked. 'Would you have any um... moon tea? I've... I've run out.'

Maegi laughed. 'Of course, child.' She turned away and pulled a small packet of dried herbs from a drawer. She pressed them into the girl's hand along with the vial. 'Is this man not the one for you then, that you do not want his babies?'

'No, it's not that Maeg,' the girl said. 'I don't want anyone's babies.' As she said it, a tiny thought unfurled inside her, that perhaps it might be nice to have Jaime's baby. _Not now, of course, or any time soon but... if ever I were going to have one. I mean, if I had to. Jaime's would be nice._

'What is his name?' Maegi asked. Her black eyes bored into the girl's.

'Well, he calls himself Jaime. But that's not really his name,' the girl answered, flustered. But just as she said it, something floated loose from the tangled mess in her mind, a recent memory, of Draw the outlaw. On the bridge-road. She clearly heard him say again, in that lisping tone: '_Now now, Jaime, don't over-excite yourself...' _

The floor felt like it tilted and righted itself. _Draw called him Jaime. It's not an alias. His name really is Jaime._

'Jaime,' said Maegi, her eyes dark and intense. 'Like Jaime Lannister. The Kingslayer.'

This time it felt like the room spun around and then suddenly stopped, because the girl found it was hard to keep her balance. 'No,' she said, automatically. But the pieces of her mind clicked into place like tumblers in a lock, and she knew.

_Yes._


	22. From bad

**Author's note: chapter 22 is split in parts a) and b) because each has its own unique focus. Both parts are therefore short. I will post part b) tomorrow, so that my reviewer guestbron can get on with his life.**

* * *

The girl didn't remember leaving Maegi's hut but somehow she must've done, for she found herself walking back past the orchards and the garden plots, the morning sun glistening on the leaves and everything bright and smelling like wet earth. Then she was skirting the walls of the town and following the creek back to where the trees sloped up into the hills. Putting one foot in front of the other. She had a skinny drawstring bag slung over her shoulder, but she didn't remember paying for the things inside. Nothing seemed quite real any more. One thought repeated itself in her head, to the exclusion of all others_:_

_Jaime is the Kingslayer. _

It wasn't as though she didn't believe it, because it was immediately, completely, believable. It all made sense where it hadn't before; the discrepancies in Jaime's story that she'd not wanted to examine too closely, his accent, his education, his worth to the Northmen, his innate sense of superiority. So obvious now, that he was different from herself. Arya and Gendry, the men at the Inn, Brodrick and the outlaws, they'd all talked but she'd refused to listen.

_Jaime is the enemy I've spent all the last year hating._

She'd wanted so much to believe he was someone like her. A commoner. A soldier, maybe, but someone on her level. A lowborn, a villager, a guard, a sellsword, a criminal. She realised now that her subconscious had wanted the happy-ever-after fiction _so much_, that it had ignored any evidence that deviated from it.

_There is no such thing as happy ever after stories, _she told herself, disgusted. _You know that, better than most. You thought you were so wordly. But along comes a charmer with a handsome face and a cock he knows how to use, and suddenly you're as blind as the greenest maiden._

She clamped down on the thoughts, smothered them, lest they destroy her. She still had to get back to Sooty. Sooty was all that mattered now. She had to stay focused, for Sooty.

Still the images crowded into her head. Jaime's green eyes darkening when he looked at her, his fingers entwined in her fingers. Jaime's quirky smile when he said something irreverent. Jaime kissing her softly, his hands touching her face.

_Everything is a lie. Remember that. We can't help what we feel; maybe so, but feelings are shields that hide the truth. Your feelings for Jaime are all based on a lie._ She told herself this sternly, over and over again, as she trudged up the hill away from Maidenpool. Each step was becoming more of an effort, her boots dragging. Her body was rebelling against taking her any closer to the confrontation she wished to avoid. The thought of Sooty, and the medicine in her drawstring bag, were all that kept her going.

Hoof beats interrupted the girl's thoughts, and she looked up to see the packhorse cantering towards her through the trees. The sight of Jaime on its back made her stomach somersault with alarm, and her first instinct was to run away. _ I thought I had more time, but here he is, riding towards me. _She didn't run but froze instead, and lowered her gaze to the grass in front of her.

'Thank the gods I found you, girl! We need to go. There are Northmen coming this way, they're at the ridge,' Jaime said, urgently, as the horse skidded to a stop in front of her. He had his arm stretched out, his hand reaching for hers to pull her up beside him. 'Quickly.'

The girl almost didn't trust herself to speak. Now that he was actually here, so much hurt and betrayal rose up inside her, she was sick with it. She just wanted him gone. She never wanted to have to look at him again, at his beautiful, lying face.

'I'm not going with you,' she said, through gritted teeth.

Jaime wheeled his horse about as it tried to keep moving, sweat lathering its sides. 'Come _on, _girl' he said impatiently. 'They're close, maybe only a couple of miles away, on horseback. If we leave now we still are odds to evade them.' When the girl didn't respond, Jaime jumped down and strode briskly towards her, holding the reins of the agitated horse in one hand. 'These men are not villagers. I've encountered them before, and I don't much want to again. And trust me, neither do you.'

'Trust you?' the girl said. 'That's funny.'

Jaime reached her and went to take her arm, maybe to drag her with him. She looked right at him then, and something in her eyes must have startled him, because his hand stopped in mid air. 'What's wrong with you?'

The girl stared at him as if he were a stranger she'd only this moment met. She saw with a new clarity his arrogance and his entitlement, she saw the same hands that held her close at night were also the hands that brought death to so many without care or remorse. 'Was it amusing to you, all this time?' she asked. 'It must have been entertaining.'

'What the fuck are you...? We don't have time for riddles!' Jaime tried to settle the horse as it spun and stamped.

'Was it _amusing,' _she hissed, 'listening to me talk about my brother, how he died, on that day with the King's party at the Crossroads? You must have had a good laugh to yourself, seeing as you already knew all about it, seeing as unlike me, _you_ _were there. _With your sister the Queen, and all the rest of your _family.'_

A brief shock flashed across Jaime's face, then he clenched his jaw and looked down. The girl thought he was going to deny it, but he didn't say anything for a long time. Finally he sighed and ran one hand through his hair. 'Fuck,' he swore, softly. He closed his eyes, at least having the gall to look ashamed.

'I promise you, girl. I didn't kill your brother. I didn't... order him killed.'

'No you were just one of those who rode after him, weren't you? One of those you told me who rather enjoyed _that sort of thing_.' Despite everything the girl held her breath, her heart thundering, waiting with every last shred of hope she had for him to prove her wrong.

Jaime rubbed his brow, pinched the skin between his fingers. The girl could see he was struggling for words, and her heart sank slowly the longer he didn't speak. At last Jaime dropped his hand to his side and looked skywards, defeated. 'I didn't enjoy it,' he said, under his breath.

It felt to the girl as if a giant hand had reached down and wrapped around her chest, her throat, crushing her insides in an unbearably constricting vice. _Mycah I'm sorry, _she thought. _I've been such a fool._

A wind sprang up and rustled the leaves of the trees, clouds swept across the sun.

'I know you must hate me more than anyone else in the world right now,' Jaime said.

'No,' said the girl, her voice strangled. 'I hate myself more. For being _so fucking stupid_.'

Jaime looked behind himself, through the trees, listening. He turned back to face her, determined. 'You can hate me as much when we're not in immediate danger. You can hate me the rest of your life, but you do need to have a life. Just... come with me.' There was a pleading tone to his last words which the girl had never heard from him before. She wondered how much it cost him to use it. _ Here I am a commoner, a no-one, and here a Lord is, begging. _She almost could have laughed out loud at the insanity, if she had breath to spare. Not that it mattered any, because after today she didn't intend to speak to him again.

'I'm not coming with you, now or ever,' she choked out. 'And if you come near me, it had best be to kill me, because I'd die before I let you touch me again. _Kingslayer_.'

A hard change shuttered down over Jaime's expression, he looked cold and distant. He stared at her, then abruptly he turned and vaulted onto the horse. 'As you wish, girl,' he said, not looking her way again, but down the hill, towards his future. Then he gave the excited horse its head and it surged forward with pent-up energy, kicking clods of dirt high into the air.

The girl watched Jaime until the trees closed around him, until the galloping hoof beats were lost in the rising wind. She tried to summon up anger, or hatred, because at least that would be something, but inside she just felt empty, like the chrysalis of a cicada that looked so alive until one fingertip crumbled it to dust.


	23. to worse

_Well, fuck him anyway._

The girl plodded up the hill, feeling nothing but a listless indifference. Her body walked, breathed, performed all the basic functions, it was just infected with a dull torpor. She welcomed the lack of caring, about anything, as a relief from the hurt she knew would hit her soon enough.

Later, she would fall down that hole later. _Maybe I can feel nothing forever. Gods be good._

The ridge where she had camped with Jaime the night before came into view, and with it a band of men and horses milling around, how many exactly she couldn't be bothered counting. The men were dismounted and appeared to be scanning for tracks. The girl had heard them and knew they were there, but so was Sooty. After only a brief falter, she heedlessly continued on.

The men didn't immediately notice her, but when they did they all stopped what they were doing and turned in her direction. They wore black and grey vests, chainmail, leather coats with fur-lined cloaks, and had various weapons and shields either on their person or slung over their saddles. Two of the horses had banners strapped to them, which fluttered red and black in the breeze. If they were surprised to see her, they didn't show it.

She walked up to them, pointed to the distant shape of Sooty beyond them in the grass. 'That's my horse.'

The men didn't reply, but looked wary. A couple drew their swords. Three of them stepped to the side and glanced behind the girl, then up along the ridge-line. The rest of the group formed a line across the girl's path, blocking her way to Sooty.

'There's no-one with me,' the girl said in a tired voice. She couldn't care less about these people. 'I'm not armed. I have nothing of value.' She stopped. Some of the men's faces looked vaguely familiar, but all she wanted to do was get to Sooty and help her, then leave here and go home. Whoever these men were, whatever they wanted with Jaime, it was no longer her concern. _Jaime is no longer my concern._

'I just want to get to my horse,' she said, when no-one spoke.

One of the men stepped forward, drew a large knife from its sheath and held it relaxed by his side. His belt was also hung with a sword, and a strange pale object that flopped as he moved. A scar curved under his right eye, and a beard and moustache made his gaunt face look longer. His eyes though, were gimlet-sharp, they reminded her of a crow's eyes. The same bright curiosity. 'That your dead horse up there, girl?' he asked.

'She's not dead,' the girl stated.

The man raised his brows in an exaggerated look of disbelief as he approached. 'That right? Only, I seen a lot of dead horses in me life, an' from here, that one looks to be one of the deadest.'

'I have medicine, in my bag.' The girl couldn't give a fuck about playing his stupid games. 'Just let me treat her. I'm not here to give you trouble. I don't care what you or your men are doing.'

'You know what we're doing,' the man drawled, stopping in front of her and crossing his arms. The edge of the diamond-shaped knife was now level with the girl's neck.

'And I don't care.' She became aware that the three men who had been checking the surrounds had now come to stand behind her, and she was almost fully enclosed in a circle. A prickling unease invaded her lethargy, but she dismissed it.

'Where's your travellin' partner?' the scarred man asked.

'He's gone. That way,' she pointed back through the trees in the direction Jaime had taken.

The man regarded her with his shiny eyes a moment longer. 'You two have a fallin' out?'

'I made a mistake,' the girl said.

'Yes.' The man ran one finger down the side of his cheek, smiled in a way that made the girl take notice. 'You have.'

Up close, she got a whiff of something rotten, and she noticed with apprehension that the object dangling from the man's belt was a hand, or what remained of one. The last two fingers were just white bones held together with little scraps of tendon. The joints of both fleshless digits curled in as though trying to cling to something. Dried blood that looked not more than a day old smeared the thin rope that was tied around the stump end.

She began to get the creeping feeling that of all the mistakes she'd made this last week, not going with Jaime might turn out to be her biggest one.

'Who's hand is... is that?' she asked, hesitantly.

'A young man called Callem Cole. From the Hollow, I believe. Found him wanderin' around a ways back. He were very helpful,' the man said. 'He were ever so _cooperative.' _

'I know you,' the girl said. 'You were at the Inn.'

'So we was. I seen you there too,' the man, who she now recognised as the one called Locke, agreed. He nodded, went on in a conversational tone. 'If I recall, you was askin' for a long-handled axe_ capable of splitting metal. _That's a big axe, for a little girl, ain't it?'

She didn't reply, beginning to regret ever opening her mouth.

Locke picked his teeth with a thumb nail, his eyes fixed beadily on the girl. 'I remembered you again later when we seen them villagers from RedHollow, headin' off all secretive-like, just after the North soldiers told 'em about the large reward on a certain somebody's head. They had with 'em a big ugly horse that they was usin' to track. Now I ain't a learned man,' he bowed his head with false modesty, 'but I got meself a good memory. And I remembered how I knew of a delivery girl once, had a big ol' horse like that. Followed her everywhere, like a dog, it did. Bad-tempered beast it was, too. So I says to meself, 'Weren't that the self-same girl I seen buyin' axes to break chains with at the Inn recently? What a coincidence.'

He stroked his beard thoughtfully and paused, as if to see if the girl was enjoying their chat as much as he evidently was.

She kept her mouth pressed shut, so Locke continued on with his story. 'And then after a bit of snoopin' around, as luck would have it, we chanced apon the Cole boy. He were ever so cooperative, did I mention? A real talker. He tells us he seen a certain delivery girl and one Ser Jaime Lannister in the flesh , gettin' all cosied-up with one another. Lookin' like they was about to fuck like rabbits. Well, I says to meself, if that ain't happy news.'

The girl breathed evenly, deeply, tried not to let her rising tension show. _He doesn't want you. He'll let you go. Don't panic._

Locke was clearly relishing having her as an audience. 'Here's the thing. Y'see, we had given the Kingslayer up for dead, when he gave us the slip by jumpin' off a bridge. Ain't seen hide nor hair of him, since. And so we'd gone and sent his lady-friend back to KingsLanding, after she sweet-talked us into thinkin' the Kingslayer would pay a reward for her. Roose said we had to keep the Lannisters and Tyrells on side. But just between you an' me,' he leaned in conspiratively to the girl, and she could again smell the decaying scent of the detached hand, 'I always had a twinge of regret 'bout that decision. Thought we maybe been a _little bit hasty. _So imagine me joy at finding out Jaime were not only still in the Riverlands, but he's gone and got himself another lady-friend.'

She held her voice steady. 'It's the Kingslayer you want, not me. And like I told you, he's already gone.'

'Yes. And ain't it a wonderful thing,' Locke said, 'that we have you to bring him back for us?' He motioned with his head and two men grabbed the girl's hands from behind, twisted them harshly together. She felt rough-braided rope loop and tighten around her wrists.

'The Kingslayer cares nothing for me,' she argued, her voice rising, her previous apathy now fully replaced with a dreadful foreboding. Locke had two finger to his lips, and a look on his face that told her he was going to enjoy what happened next. She felt such keen fear then that she thought she might piss herself, or vomit, or lose all control of her muscles.

'We shall see, won't we?' He lifted one finger, and the two men holding her arms pushed her down to a sitting position, while another two stepped forward and took hold of her legs. She kicked, fought to free herself, understanding too late her predicament. Her right boot was pulled off, and her ankle pinned to the hard flat ground. Her foot looked small and white against the dirt.

'Your fuck-friend is probably a good distance away by now,' Locke said, with the carving knife in one hand and a smile that made his black eyes glitter like gems in a cave. 'So do try and scream loudly.'

* * *

**Author's note: A special thank you as always to my reviewers, especially LongRun and KittyD for multiple reviews, and Hermitt for being so nice.**


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